United Cakedom: corn bread

I have been a fan of the David’s the owners of Outsider Tart since I bought myself a copy of their book 2 summers ago. I have stated more then once my love for their book Baked in America. I even traveled to Oxford to get them to sign it. So it's a bit odd that this was my first visit to the shop, store, café, bakery, all of the above?

Thursday after my day at Cake Boy (see previous entry) my friend Lauren, picked me up and to avoid rush hour traffic hung out at Outsider Tart for a bit. It was on our way back to Berkshire, not that I needed an excuse to visit!

The day before I had tweeted them @OutsiderTart and asked what I should try as my birthday treat. I had a reply saying I should ask for him (David) when I got there because he was working on an ice cream sandwich.

Before I get to the ice cream sandwich can I just say that if you are planning to visit Outsider Tart you should go on Thursday night because it’s Chili Night and the chili was amazing! It was accompanied by the best corn bread I think I have ever had. Or at least the best I have had since I left Indiana in 1998.

Back to the ice cream sandwich…it was good! It was gorgeous! The vanilla ice cream middle was the perfect balance to the rich chocolate cookie outside. I hope they decide to add it to the menu!

Thank you so much David for letting me try it out! I hope to visit again soon!!

We've had a quiet bonfire night/weekend, but food has not been compromised! Yesterday I made really yummy easy quick chili from Nigella's Express. I needed something to accompany that chili and that's where the chili corn bread steps in!

I found the recipe for the corn bread in the November issue of Delicious magazine. I didn't think that one finely chopped chilli would make any difference in flavor, but it's perfectly distributed through out the loaf. It was very good and a perfect accompaniment to chili, baked beans, tomato soup, and all sorts of different savory dishes!

60g unsalted butter, melted, plus extra for greasing

250g cornmeal or fine polenta, plus extra to dust

250g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp fine sea salt

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

4 medium free-range eggs

300ml buttermilk

300ml whole milk

1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

Preheat the oven to 220C/fan200C/gas 7. Grease a 1 litre loaf tin with butter, then dust with the extra polenta.
Mix the dry ingredients and make a well in the center.
In another bowl, whisk the eggs with the buttermilk, milk, and butter (make sure the melted butter isn’t too hot when I added my chilled buttermilk and milk it solidified everything turned out okay but it was weird looking) then pour into the well in the dry ingredients and mix.
Stir in the chilli, and then scoop into the tin.
Bake for 40-45 minutes until golden and starting to come away from the sides of the tin. Serve warm and with butter!