Magazine Monday #5: Blueberry Corn Bread

This recipe from Canadian Living's August 2008 issue caught my eye because it seemed a little different from your ordinary corn bread. I love corn bread, but don't make it that often to be honest. It's often associated with chili, which I can understand, but as I'm not the hugest chili fan in the world, I guess that's why I don't have a lot of corn bread. Since I just bought blueberries on a recent shopping trip, I was happy to see Canadian Living feature them in this month's issue. Combine that with an inexplicable hankering for corn bread in general, I decided to make this recipe for this week's Magazine Monday post.

Sweet Corn & Blueberry Corn Bread (courtesy Canadian Living, Aug. 2008)

1 1/4 cups cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup cooked, thawed, or canned corn kernels
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 1/4 cups blueberries
2 tsp granulated sugar

1. Whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking soda, baking powder, salt.

2. In a food processor or blender, puree the corn kernels with brown sugar until lumpy. Add buttermilk and eggs. Puree to combine.

3. Make a well in the flour mixture. Pour in corn mixture and stir until just combined. Fold in butter. Fold in blueberries.

4. Pour into a greased 9" glass pie plate, smoothing the top. Sprinkle with sugar.

5. Bake at 375F until deep golden and cake tester inserted comes out clean - about 30 - 35 minutes. Cool on rack.

Coyote's Version:

I skipped the puree step. I admit, I was lazy about it and didn't feel like dirtying the food processor. I put the brown sugar in with the dry ingredients, combined the buttermilk & eggs, and folded that into the flour mixture. Then I folded in the corn, butter, and blueberries. I also used raw turbinado sugar for the topping instead of regular white granulated. And, as you can see by the picture, I didn't bake this in a pie plate, either. I wanted something easy to freeze since that's where the bulk of these are going. So, I made muffins, and I got exactly 12 from this recipe. They weren't too sweet, they smelled nice and corny, and the sugar on the top added a nice crunch and extra bit of flavour.

The result: just fine and dandy, thank you very much. All in all, an excellent recipe - as usual coming from the fine folks over at Canadian Living!