Sweet Potato Cornbread
We’re on our way to Philly/some-part-of-Deleware for a long weekend. I have been to neither. Deleware is for the second of three weddings this year. We’re making a pit stop in Philly because we can. We have friends there and Andrew has had nothing but good things to say about it the few times he has gone for work. If you have any last-minute suggestions of places to check out, you know where to find me.
I made this cornbread a fit of “I don’t know what I want to eat for dinner, so I’m just going to bake something and eat a ton of the batter and be full when I put it in the oven and then I’ll have something to eat over the coming week.” Welcome to my mind. This worked as planned. I know it’s a half-assed dinner, but there are veggies! Plus, it gave me an excuse to use up some more of that Grist Mill flour I’ve kept safely in the freezer. I’ve only had this recipe bookmarked forever and a day [ok, since she posted it in 2015]. The idea is simple really. Mashed sweet potato adds sweetness [and nutrients] to an otherwise normal piece of cornbread. The fibers of the sweet potato streak the finished product making you question whether you put carrots in here instead, but I assure you that it’s still sweet potato in there. That said if you are a sweet potato hater [you know who you are], you don’t taste it. It tastes like a normal piece of lightly sweetened cornbread. It imparts a lovely bit of moisture that kept things together a lot better than the last cornbread I made with these flours.
As long as I kept it covered in plastic wrap, the bread stayed good the whole week. I was eating a piece for breakfast and slivering off the tiniest pieces all the time when I felt like it.
Inspiration: Budget Bytes
Ingredients
- 1lb sweet potatoes
- 1 1/2 cups cornmeal
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 3/4 cup milk [I used unsweetened almond milk without issue]
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Preparation
Peel and cube the sweet potato. Put the cubes in a pot, cover them with water, and bring the whole thing to a boil over high heat. Once they’re fork tender, drain them and set them aside to cool.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Place a 10″ cast iron skillet inside. If yours isn’t that seasoned or you know it well enough that baked goods like to stick, you should rub the inside with some additional oil.
In a large bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Mash your sweet potatoes and then transfer 1 1/2 cups to another large bowl. I used my stand mixer. Add the sour cream, milk, and oil. Beat together until it’s all combined. Add the eggs one at a time, incorporating completely.
Fold the sweet potato mixture in with the bowl of dry ingredients. Stir as little as possible while getting the dry ingredients incorporated. There may be some lumps, but that’s ok.
Take the skillet out of the oven. Pour the batter into it and even it out. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 22-25 minutes until the top is golden brown and it’s starting to crack around the edges. Remove from the oven.