apron tied & oven preheated

My dream is to go to culinary school. Buuuuttt that is where culinary school will have to stay- in my dreams. Because it cost mucho dinero and doesn't really fit in with the rest of my life, and yeah it's just a silly desire of mine, I don't think I fully comprehend all that culinary school entails anyway.

Anywho, I will have to just stick to baking (mostly) and (some) cooking in my own kitchen. 

My most recent recipe to tackle: pumpkin cornbread (from scratch of course). Sounds...interesting, right? I thought so too. 

Well corn and pumpkin are 2 great autumn ingredients why not see if they work well together? Plus I bought my corn meal from the farmer's market yessss legit stuff.

First decision in the kitchen: nix the onions. GROSS. I detest onions. Almost all the time. They are almost as bad as nasty mushrooms ...but alas I am straying from story time. SO after solving the problem of those disgusting parasites I soldiered on to complete my bread. After measuring ingredients, combining the dry mix with the liquidy stuff (I've got the terminology down pat) I have my batter completed. Time to taste it. 

Okay, now granted this is unfinished cornbread batter, so it is not going to be as delectable as cookie dough or anything. But still. It was...I dunno...not good. To be frank. A quick call to my mom and she explained that because it called for no sugar, but yes to onions- that means it is not your typical sweet cornbread it's more like a side for something spicy or stew or something. In order to remedy that problem I need more honey and sugar. Clearly I am not going to put up a fight there. Add sugar? No problem.

In the end the pumpkin puree made the bread fantastically moist and the pumpkin, while not extremely recognizable in the taste, did not overpower the cornbread. Pretty decent results for my first try, especially with the slight concluding fiasco. 

And I think my housemates were pleased :)

I love creating something out of a bunch of nothings- some flour, corn meal, salt, honey, pumpkin, eggs etc. I love that in baking you can mess something up but remedy it your next time around. You can experiment with something new and get excited when it turns out well because YOU created that, you made that good decision. And the smells that swirl around and even the mess I make and the final product- it's all so exciting to me. And I especially love pleasing people with treats, seeing them get really excited when they walk in the kitchen to a free dessert, bread, what have you. And then enjoying my creation so much that they sneak back in the kitchen later and sheepishly slice off another piece. Perfect.