savory cornmeal pancakes

Over these last few weeks, I've made a plethora of goodies. Goodies that had little photoshoots with my Sony. The same Sony that I can't find the adapter of. So I can't upload the pictures. This was a huge disappointment.  Here's a list of all the things I've made.

• Pepperjack Popovers
• Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting
• Blueberry Muffins
• Pumpkin Bread with a Cream Cheese Swirl 
• Cheddar-Herb Quickbread 
• Corn Muffins 

All of these were so good! Hopefully, I can find my stupid adapter that LOVES to play hide and seek with me soon. Boo. Meanwhile, I have these amazing cornmeal pancakes I made today. Using my noggin, I decided to take these with my phone. Instagram, thank you for saving these odd lighted pictures. I love you.



I never considered myself a chef. At most, I was an amateur baker. At my lowest points, I was a carblovin' teenager with a clunky camera. I usually leave the cooking to my mom, who is an amazing cook. She can whip up delicious, improv meals from anything. It's siiiick, to say the least. But, when I am home alone, hungry, and left with no leftovers, I love to experiment. Mac and cheese from scratch. Quinoa with a cheese sauce. Quinoa with zucchini and Italian sausage. Fried rice balls.

This time, I had a  practically full sack of cornmeal that I bought for corn muffins just sitting in my pantry.  I settled on cornmeal pancakes because I wanted to try to cook with cornmeal. I opted to make these savory but you can easily turn them into a sweet breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner. Just add some vanilla and drizzle with maple syrup or honey. ALSO, hi vegans! These are for you! I added some sour cream because I wanted to be risky but omit that. Use 1/4 cup of any milk subsitute and you are set.



Savory Cornmeal Pancakes with Carmelized Onions
adapted from Mark Bittman
Serves 1-2

3/4 cup stone ground cornmeal
3/4 cup boiling water
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
scant 1/4 cup milk
1 tbsp (+ more for serving) sour cream
1 large onion
cherry tomatoes
ground pepper

Slice an onion thinly. Heat up a thickbottomed pan (I used a glass pot) and coat it with olive oil. And follow these instructions.

While the onions are getting delicious, put the cornmeal, salt, and boiling water in one bowl. Let it sit for ten minutes.

Stir in the milk slowly until it is thick but spreadable. Add the sour cream and oil and stir to combine.

Heat up a griddle or cast iron pan. Follow the best instructions for making pancakes. I never use the conventional way because it just don't work for me. I always keep it at medium heat because the pan always spurts oil and becomes a hot, scary mess. Follow Mark Bittman's instructions, unless you're like me.

when the pancakes are done, put them on a paper towel over the plate. You don't have to but I like to. Your onions should be a nice light brown. If you want to caramelize them even further, feel free too. I like them with a crunch. To serve, top the pancakes with the onions, a dollop of sour cream, and sliced cherry tomatoes. Sprinkle tomatoes with salt and pepper.

Dig in! Take a forkful of all the elements and swoon. Happy eating!

banana bread and why my pictures are blurry

Before we move on to the banana bread, let me just flat out tell you that these are pics from my iPhone. After I baked these, I couldn't find my dSLR's connector to my computer so I was like "womp" and just took pics with my phone because I couldn't be able to upload the nice pics anyway. I was wrong.
I found my cord an hour after. Okay, cool. Moving on...

Banana bread is probably the simplest baked good The only words to describe it are moist and slightly sweet. I used this recipe from Orangette before and was bestowed with great success, even though I forgot to add the water and used only half of the topping. This time, after I followed the recipe almost word for word, it came out even better than before. How can you trust me? Well, I "accidentally" ate a 1/4 of a loaf. The loaf was magically sliced up into the slices, the cinnamon sugar beckoning me. Oops.



Usually, I prefer my sweet breads to have chunks of nuts. This time, I totally forgot about the bag of walnuts in my fridge. If you want crunch, add two handfuls of toasted walnuts. To be honest, I didn't need the crunch, after all! The crackly top (see below) satisfied me.



Look at that top! (You can see a few grains of raw sugar that didn't seep into the soft bread. Oops.) When you poke a toothpick through the surface, you hear the faintest crackling of the broken crust. Crackly crust and soft, barely sweet bread. Perfection. You'll be finding me cradled up with a cup of steaming tea and a slice of this every day. Much love and enjoy your week!

P.S. Only 15 Twitter followers from 100! Follow me on Twitter: @whatnicoleate

Notes: Substituted 1/2 cup of the AP flour for white whole wheat flour. Decreased the amount of sugar to 3/4 cup. Used 10 tsp agave instead of 12 tsp (1/4 cup) honey. 

news, updates, and muffins

Oh hi, how ya doin'? I'm all and well.

Okay, just kidding. I'm not. Being a teenager in this world seriously sucks. Maybe I'm just saying that because I have midterms in a couple of days and my skin is breaking out like crazy. I'm bereft of skin knowledge because my skin has never caused me any problems. I just do my daily cleaning routine and I'm good. Ugh, not anymore.

Hypothesis: If I stop eating foods filled with sugar, then I will have my old skin back. Does that make sense? Will it work? I can't help my stress; I can't even manage that ish. So, new diet it is. Hopefully I can stick to my new vegan diet. Oh God. I'm scared.

Oh, and the muffins you see above my lil rant? They're good. Not great. A solid A-. It's my fault though. I made crazy adaptions both by accident and on purpose. The first adaption was adding Craisins. THAT addition was good. The ones with Craisins were 10x better than the ones without. Next, I filled the tins with batter BEFORE they had time to rise. I thought the instructions said that they will rise in the tins. I'm an idiots sometimes most of the time. I also halved the topping amount. I bet they would taste better with more butter and sugar. What wouldn't? Another mishap was putting the batter into baking cups rather than a sprayed muffin tin. I made two without cups, just to experiment, and they held up better. Moister. My last mistake was over baking them(?). Maybe it was baking cups that caused this because the sans cup weren't burnt on the bottom like the ones in cups were.

Yeah, so take my advice and don't do the things I did. Except adding the Craisins. THAT, my friend, was a good move.

See ya on the flip side.