The first thing I had to do was make some pumpkin purée, which the recipe calls for, unaware that over here such things aren't readily available in convenient tinned format. But that was easy enough: I just carved up a pumpkin and put the pieces skin side up on a couple of baking trays:
Then baked it at 180°C for about half an hour - till it was prickable with a fork, basically. Then I peeled the flesh off the skin and whizzed it in the food processor, which gave me a nice big jar of bright orange goo!
See, I figured out that image rotation thingy in the end :)
I did this the night before, and put it in the fridge. Then yesterday I just basically followed the recipe, using Heckington Windmill flour, Croft Apiaries honey (bought from Oslinc, my neighbour), and Ownsworth's rapeseed oil.
I spent some time looking up sources of local sugar, thinking that since I'm surrounded by sugar beet fields (my garden backs onto some growing right now!) it shouldn't be hard to find some, only to find that "British Sugar" pretty much rules the sugar world over here. It seems they get to pretty much decide what goes where, to whom and in what format, so I can't get a bag of sugar from the local beet to put in my tea and cakes. In fact the only British beet sugar I can buy comes from the Silver Spoon company. Their stuff comes from East Anglian farms, so I thought "close enough" (since some parts of Lincolnshire kind-of qualify as EA) and looked up their products.
To my dismay, there's no unrefined caster sugar, no brown sugar and no muscavado on offer from them - only that awful overprocessed white stuff, demerara and various sugar substitute/diet stuff. I stopped using white sugar many years ago as it's basically a chemical - it's not even food. Trust me, if you make the switch to unrefined you'll find your cakes and tea are just as tasty and sweet but without the bad aftertaste.
"What bad aftertaste?" I hear you ask. It's the one you don't realise is there because you're used to it, and think that's how it's meant to taste, a bit like the paper taste from your teabags that I didn't notice until one time when the shop had a special offer on loose leaf tea, so I got some and it lasted me about a month. When it ran out I went for the teabags as usual, made myself a cuppa and found that, by the end of, it I felt like I'd just eaten a sheet of A4 and wondered how I'd never noticed it before. In the same way, if you quit the white sugar for a month or so, then have some in a brew, you'll see what I mean. Vile stuff.
So, a bit of a mixed bag, news-wise: I can get local-ish demerara for my tea and coffee, and I already know that works as a substitute for white sugar in some cooking contexts. But it seems that for other sugar purposes I'll continue to depend on Billingtons, which I suppose is at least a moderately ethical company. I'll look into this more after my exam is over next week, as I've a few ideas in mind that this isn't all there is to it.
Anyway, back to the cornbread. I used Billingtons light brown sugar in the end, and poured the resultant runny mixture (which had a distinctly nutty smell to it) into the only suitable dish I have. Which, being somewhat larger than the 8" square recommended, means I did a double quantity. Half an hour at 180°C later, this is what I had:
I won't say there wasn't a bit of a baking powder taste to it. I will need to experiment with it I think, as the local wheat flour (as previously explained) isn't as willing to rise as its imported counterpart, and if you go too far down the whole "add more BP" route, you end up ruining the flavour. I might give yeast a try next time.
Later that evening, Emma told me she'd been looking it up and apparently what they call cornmeal over there is closer to what we call polenta (course texture) than to maize flour (fine), but it seems no harm was done. I will have another go at this because as far as value for money goes, it's a lot of cake for very little money, and as cakes go it's pretty low in fat and sugar and also dairy free. If I do a version that's all maize and no wheat flour, it'll also be gluten free. A handy one to pull out when allergy sufferers come a-visiting.
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