Rolling Around, and Crazy Cranberries!

Okay, so I can't be lazy anymore, since I promised that I would update you on my baking classes at George Brown, which continued this past weekend! We made Swiss Rolls this week, which if you've never had one are sheets of light and airy sponge cake filled with a jam or cream mixture, covered in whipped cream and decorated. We had a choice of doing raspberry jam or lemon curd fillings in class, so I opted for doing one of each! I decorated the lemon roll with flaked almonds and used "biscuit crunch" (whatever the heck that is... it kind of looks like kibble to me...) on the raspberry one. Sadly, the ingredients for the filling and "creamish" were not exactly leaning towards realism, but I guess I can let it slide. Why, you ask? Well, I calculated the number of eggs we used as a class on that day alone, and came up with a staggering number... 312! Yeah, you read that right... 26 dozen eggs made into Swiss Rolls and sweet paste bases for next week's fruit flans... in one afternoon! When you factor in an average unit price of 11 cents an egg (last I checked for the bakery), they really aren't fooling around on the whole ovoid front!

My favourite part of the class was watching the demo... turns out 24 eggs will not fit into the small bowl of a stand mixer after it's been whipping for 10 minutes! Guess the instructors don't know everything, now, do they? I, at least, know that they taste decent - both my mom and Cel had big slices tonight with their tea, and I'm fairly sure my stepbrother's inhaled a fair portion too. Jeez, with all this extra cake hanging around, no one's going to want any of my home made birthday cake this weekend!

Anyways, onto recipes I can actually share with you! I have a wonderful recipe for cornbread that I've made a variety of different ways over the years (adding everything from blueberries to cheese to one lone instance of a whole habanero pepper... Andrew loved me for that one, especially since he ate it at work!). This time, I combined two of my favourite cornbread add-ins... cranberries and jalapenos. The result is something sort of sweet, tangy, and spicy all in a tender and (most importantly) moist package. It doesn't hurt that it's whole wheat either! When I get my hands on some blue cornmeal I'm going to make this again, just for the gorgeous colour combination!

Cranity Insanity Cornbread
Serves 9
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp cornstarch
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp soda
¼ tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
2 tbsp canola oil
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
¼ cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 - 2 jalapeno peppers, minced
½ cup fresh cranberries, coarsely chopped

1. Preheat oven to 400°F, and grease a 9" square pan.
2. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
3. Combine buttermilk, oil, applesauce, brown sugar and peppers, beat into dry ingredients.
4. Fold in cranberries.
5. Bake 25 minutes.
6. Best served warm, but freezes and reheats well.

Amount Per Serving

Calories: 164.5

Total Fat: 4.1 g

Cholesterol: 1.1 mg

Sodium: 36.7 mg

Total Carbs: 29.6 g

Dietary Fiber: 3.0 g

Protein: 3.9 g