Tasty Kitchen: Cornbread and Fluffy Honey Butter

This recipe is now my go-to recipe for cornbread. I have tried various recipes over the years, but this one is definitely the best by far. It is a Yankee cornbread, for all you silly southerners who don't like sugar in your cornbread. This is sweet, moist, cakey, and heaven on a plate.

With my family, I double this recipe. Every. Single. Time. If I didn't, the masses would probably start gnawing on chair legs or something, so I try to keep them happy. I don't usually make the honey butter, but I have, and it is good. I prefer a big pat of homemade butter spread (I'll post about that one next), and a big spoonful of pure honey. I eat it with a fork, just like it was cake.

If you love a good Northern cornbread, this is it. This is what you have been searching for all your life. Make it with a big, yummy batch of chili (that recipe will be coming soon enough), and you will love me forever. I promise.

Pioneer Woman's Apple Dumplings

I love this recipe. For so many reasons. It is a life changer as far as desserts go, and so yummy. I can say that the apples are healthy for you..... but that's about as far as it goes. You have yummy apples, wrapped in store bought crescent rolls, topped with a slurry of butter and sugar (and really, who doesn't love butter and sugar?), and to top it all off..... Mt. Dew. Seriously. Mt. Dew. That bright, green, antifreeze colored sugary drink.

Now, the original recipe calls for the apples to be cut into eighths. That is fine, but I found that the apples really just disappeared into the dough. Not bad in itself, but I wanted to know that there were apples in my apple dumplings. So my tip for this recipe is to cut the apples into quarters instead. Now, that will make it difficult to fit all of the pieces into the pan, but you can finagle it a bit, or just leave that last one out. I've thought about doing a little single one in a small ramekin, but I haven't been that ambitious. Yet.

Another tip, which Ree mentions in her post, is to not use all of the Mt. Dew. I pour just enough around the edges, and a teeny bit on top of the dumplings, just to give the dough a gorgeous crispy crust. I just pour it out without measuring, but I would guess it's less than 8oz.

This is a recipe best served warm, with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream. It's very yummy, and well worth the effort, and it's also a good idea to have lots of friends around to keep you from eating it all by yourself.