A few weeks ago, my brother and I went to visit our friend Hank. He’s a very generous older gentleman who is trying to get rid of things, not accumulate more. So in an effort to do something nice for him, we decided to bring him something to eat when we came over. It took me a while to figure out what would be the best thing to bring, especially since I wasn’t too sure about what he would like and I didn’t want to make him feel like he was ordering up something (if I asked him what we should bring).
So after thinking about it for a while, it finally hit me that this Montana guy could make a batch of Georgia Cornbread. While it’s not much to look at, it’s simple to make and tastes great–my mom has been making it the last few years as a quick dessert for family gatherings. The recipe she pointed me toward is from a lady named Barb Gertz from over at Food.com, and from her short bio there, she knows her stuff.
I think it’s a really weird thing to call what is basically pecan pie in cake form. It doesn’t include any corn at all but since it’s un-frosted, it looks similar to a pan of cornbread.
Instead of using my fancypants [amazon asin=B0002Y5X9W&text=KitchenAide Professional 600] mixer, I used my new [amazon
asin=B005GYRXA0&text=Ninja Kitchen System Pulse] blender, just to see how it would work as a quick, self-contained mixer.
Later I’ll do a more general , in-depth review of the Ninja Pulse, but at this point, I’m glad my wife got it for me for my birthday. It
is a great multi-purpose blender and smoothie maker. It’s really powerful and I’m impressed that its so well-built. I expected something called the “ninja” to be total junk, but the thing isn’t just made of standard cheapie plastic–it’s very durable and I think it’ll last a long time.
All that being said, I should have used the Kitchenaid for mixing and the Ninja to chop up the pecans. The Ninja had a hard time mixing the cornbread batter (the batter is extremely thick, especially once you add the pecans). It worked, but a few days after making this, I made another batch using the Kitchenaid.
They call it a mixer for a reason–it worked perfectly.
My Kitchenaid is their beastly model–I use it to knead bread dough and to make meringues more than anything. I don’t make a lot of stuff like this Georgia Cornbread, but I tell you what. If you don’t have a Kitchenaid mixer, get one. You might not need the gigantic one I have, but they make good stuff. If you plan on using a mixer to knead bread, you should seriously consider the Pro
model since it has a re-settable fuse inside that temporarily blows if the thing gets bogged down and overheats–which mine did once while kneading a heavy-duty wheat bread. It’s not a big deal since you just let it cool off for a bit (then it works again). Cheaper models don’t generally have safety measures like that and will just burn up (I don’t know if this is the case with the Kitchenaid Artisan or the Heavy Duty models, which are both smaller and cheaper than the Pro 600).
So all in all, try out the Georgia Cornbread–you can certainly mix it by hand, but the batter is so thick that you’ll have a dead hand pretty quickly. You can also modify the recipe pretty easily–I made a batch with a handful of peanuts and some coconut in it. That turned out too.
I’m curious if any of you have had something similar to this stuff. Did you have it growing up? Is it a Southern thing, like I have read?
