I Baked Cheesy Cornbread That Took 80 Servings To Perfect

You have a lot of failures and heartbreaks

and heartaches in recipe development. [gasps]

I've spent the last two days making 80 pieces of corn bread,

a puddle of lava cake so that I could arrive at this.

Every recipe I develop can be nerve wracking

because I want it to be really good.

I want it to work.

So I don't want people to waste their time,

their energy, their money.

I like to take it very seriously.

A big part of my job is coming up with recipes

and failing multiple times here so that you don't have to.

And today I'm gonna show you how I developed

my cheesy upside down showstopper corn bread.

[audio tape whirring]

I'm gonna take some creative liberties

and I wanna do like an upside down caramel corn bread

where you flip the corn bread over

and you have like a beautiful studded layer of corn on top.

This version doesn't really exist on the internet.

So I'm curious to see just as a recipe developer

how that's gonna turn out, how it's gonna taste.

Is it gonna work? Am I gonna fail miserably?

I don't know.

The perfect cheesy corn bread to me is fluffy.

It's moist.

So we wanna make sure

that the crumb on the corn bread is perfect.

You have those crispy edges all around, not too sweet,

leaning towards the savory side.

And I also wanna make sure that it has sufficient height,

so at least two inches.

We're gonna make two base versions.

One's gonna have the Jiffy mix

and the other version is going to have our own mixture

with AP flour and corn meal.

It is great to have a direct comparison

of how two different things will work

when put to the same application.

I'm trying to see if the payoff is the same.

What's most convenient

and what brings the most value to the recipe.

So I'm gonna start by mixing the wet ingredients

for the version where I'm using the pre-made Jiffy mix.

For the corn pudding recipe that already exists,

it uses about three eggs,

but I think that would make the corn bread tad too wet.

So I'm going with two eggs.

I'm going to do about half a cup of sour cream.

Sour cream adds enough fat

and it adds just a slight hint of tang.

So I need to melt some butters.

We're gonna do it quickly in the microwave.

The most labor inducing part of this recipe

is grating the cheese.

This is the wet butter for the Jiffy mixture.

And now I'm going to make the same wet batter

for my own mix.

[upbeat music]

I think I'm gonna add a little bit of milk.

Once dry ingredients go into this,

this batter is gonna get even thicker

and I think it's gonna be too dry.

And that's recipe development.

Nothing is fixed.

You literally just have to do things on the fly.

I want to now start adding the dry ingredients in here.

I decided to try out Jiffy's

because it's available everywhere

and I never want you to buy a whole bag of something

if it's not adding lots of value to it.

And then for it to be lying in your pantry

for years to come.

And then we're gonna add light brown sugar,

about a fourth of a cup packed.

Light brown sugar has molasses

and that makes any baked good chewy and moist.

I think I'm gonna need to add just a little bit more milk.

Okay, so I'm gonna add a fourth of a cup.

That is total of 3/4 of a cup.

I'm gonna prep these two

so that we can get this mixture in ready to go.

And I think I wanna bake mine

somewhere around 350 or 375.

The first one's going in.

This is using our Jiffy corn bread mixture.

I'm gonna set my timer for 30 minutes.

And next let's weigh out our dry ingredients

for the version where I mix

my own little corn bread mixture.

I'm using all-purpose flour.

That is gonna be four ounces.

And then we have corn meal.

The Jiffy is 8.5 ounces,

so I'm trying to make sure that I have 8.5 ounces here too

with my own mixture.

And that way the ratio from the wet ingredients

with the dry ingredients will remain the same.

Half a teaspoon of baking powder

and half a teaspoon of baking soda.

The way my mix and the Jiffy mix varies

is that the Jiffy mix has a ton of additives

and preservatives in it,

whereas my mix is just these ingredients that you see here.

Oh [beeps].

I wanted to add garlic powder.

All right, you know what we're gonna do?

We're gonna add garlic powder in this version,

and then see the difference in how they both taste.

I like garlic actually.

I'm a garlic girl.

Just half a teaspoon.

So it'll be super subtle.

The light brown sugar.

Adding the extra 1/4 cup of milk

to loosen this up as well.

Fingers crossed.

It cooks all the way through.

The timer just went off

so it's time to remove the Jiffy version.

Ooh, I think it looks good.

Clean cake tester means it's cooked all the way through.

Great. [alarm ringing]

It's going.

My mix, oh my god, she looks so good.

I'm just gonna label these so I don't get confused.

My mix, Jiffy mix.

It is the moment of truth.

Honestly, I feel like this could have been

double the height.

It's like a little over one inch

and that is not satisfactory.

I definitely think

that it could be a little bit more cheesy.

If you're gonna call this cheesy corn bread,

then I really need to taste the cheese.

I think it has too much fat

because I can like feel that it is sinking to the bottom.

I do like that it's not too sweet,

but this version needs work.

I'm going to try mine now.

It looks good on the outside.

I'm really happy with the color on this.

Yeah, this is an inch and five.

The same as that one.

Oh, okay.

This one looks better.

I like how separated the crumbs are in this.

See the difference?

Like you don't see this like pooling of fat here

like you see in this version.

It almost feels like the butter and the fat

like really absorbed well with the flour and corn.

This needs to be a little bit sweeter,

more cheesy, and more salt.

So everything just pumped up.

Hannah?

Yes. Do you wanna come try these?

Sure. This one,

I made my own mixture.

All the wet ingredients are the same.

Okay. But the dry ingredients

differ.

If this is going to be a cheesy corn bread,

I wouldn't even mind

like a little bit more. Yeah.

I also wouldn't mind

a slightly less baked final product.

Okay. It's like bordering

on like dry, but I really like the flavors.

I just want more flavors. More flavors.

The big question

before I started developing this corn bread recipe

was whether the Jiffy mix is going to hold up

to like a homemade mix and I think that it did not.

I think there is definitely value

in making your own mix

and I think that's what I'm gonna stick with.

So I used only four ounces of flour.

I'm going to double that right now

because I want our corn bread to be thick.

So we're gonna do one cup all purpose flour,

one cup of corn meal.

We're gonna grate cheese again.

I did four ounces before,

and now I'm gonna see how much six ounces looks.

Honestly I think I'm just gonna go with eight.

I mean it has to be cheesy.

It's a cheesy corn bread.

I'm going to add the baking soda and baking powder now.

I need to up the leaveners a bit

because we are increasing all of the ingredients

so there needs to be enough for everything to rise.

Two teaspoons of kosher salt.

Initially, we did one

and I think that was not enough at all.

Now, I'm gonna put together the wet ingredients.

So three eggs this time.

Because we're increasing the dry ingredients,

if there's less egg,

there's a chance that this might not set.

So initially, I added half a cup of sour cream

and I'm going to up it to 3/4 cup.

So I'm gonna up the sugar to 3/4 cup.

This I'm going to weigh.

I wanna get the measurement in grams

just so that we are hyper accurate.

It could mess with the texture,

it could mess with how quickly the corn bread is browning.

It could mess with like how charred the edges get,

and I wanna make sure that all of the chunky bits

are broken down.

You don't wanna overmix this

because that might affect how the gluten bakes

and I don't want it to be tough.

So you have to mix just until the batter comes together.

I think it looks good.

And I've decided that I'm skipping garlic.

I want the base recipe to be kind of close to the classic

and the classic does not have garlic.

I'm going to put a tray underneath this

in case it spills over.

Based on what Hannah said,

I'm going to cook it at a higher temperature,

but for lesser time.

The oven is at 400 degrees

and I'm setting my timer for 25 minutes.

Before, it was a 360 for like 35 minutes.

We'll see.

It's important to have an oven thermometer

just to double check.

This oven says 425, but it's actually at 360.

I'm worried that it's not gonna rise well and brown evenly.

I think I'm going to turn it up

to see if we can bring up the temperature

to what it's supposed to be at.

So I'm just gonna turn it up to 450

and see if that makes it dries to 400,

which is actually what we want.

We have about two to three minutes left,

but I'm not gonna wait.

I'm just gonna get it out of the oven

'cause it's browning so quickly.

Oh no, I can't get it out of the oven

because the center is still super jiggly.

Actually, no, it's done.

Let's take it out.

Let's see what happens.

I think it sunk in the center

because of the oven temperature not being right,

and then maybe there was too much

baking soda or baking powder.

So I might reduce that in the next one.

I don't even wanna call it the pumped version

'cause this is the deflated version.

This is what recipe development will do to you.

I'm quite upset right now.

See, it's not me.

[playful music]

Okay.

Oh my God.

Did you see that happen?

It's literally breathing.

Come on. [gasps]

The skewer failed me.

I'm still gonna try the parts that are cooked

and I do want a second opinion to see what happened here.

So I'm gonna call Jesse over

and we are gonna try this disaster, and then go from there.

Jesse, you literally have a cookie cookbook out

so I trust your opinion.

It's like a lava cake. [Rachel laughs]

These ovens have been brutal lately.

Yeah. So I feel like

this probably went in a hot oven and then it got cold.

[Rachel] Yeah.

I think the flavor's actually really good.

And I like the texture.

It's like not too cakey, but not too bready.

I think from this edge,

this is actually my favorite by far so far.

Would you ever try 325?

So it stays like plush all around.

But it would be a little bit longer

'cause this was only 25 minutes.

40 minutes maybe. 40 minutes.

Let's go again.

I think you're close.

Let's call it the low and slow.

For this next bake, I'm going to use a different oven

and I'm gonna change the time and temperature.

So I'm gonna do it low and slow and see what happens.

We're setting it to 400,

but only because I want to see

how far up the temperature's going to go.

And we have another thermometer in there,

which is going to give us an, hopefully accurate reading.

I'm keeping all of the other ingredients the same.

I think a lot of recipe development

feels like Groundhog Day.

We are doing the same thing over and over again.

Dry ingredients are done.

Do the what? Ingredients now?

I said three ovens.

This says 325

and that says 360.

So who should I believe?

This oven is gaslighting me.

We found one oven that's holding its temperature to 325.

So I'm going to mix the dry ingredients,

and then get this in the oven.

I'm baking it in the oven at 325 for about 40 minutes.

So really low and slow.

Oh my god.

Oh my god, it's spilling.

It's literally spilling.

I think I need to reduce half a cup of milk.

So baking it at 325.

I do think that it's like giving it a slower rise,

which is like giving it more of a rise

and it's spilling out.

Oh no, that, she's crunchy.

It's clean.

I'm gonna label this one.

This is about close to two inches.

So we've achieved that.

And also here you can see that the sugars

have accumulated on top

and you have this really rough texture on top

and that's not what I want.

Let's cut into it and see where we are.

I think that I need to definitely reduce

some of the liquid in here.

Keeping in mind how much dry ingredients are increased,

I don't think that there was still enough dry ingredients

to absorb everything.

You do get a nice little cheeses bowl

while it's warm in here, which is great.

I like the flavor, perfect balance between sweet and salty.

I wanted it to be closer to more like a savory corn bread

and I think it's achieving that.

I'm going back to 350

because the first version where I used my mix

gave me that perfect little dome

without it sinking in the middle

and that's what I wanna achieve here.

And tomorrow I'm going to work on my honey butter

and also a really fun version

which will be an upside down corn bread

if it allows.

So there's lots to do, but I'm gonna get some sleep.

Think about this and come back.

Good morning, New York.

It's a beautiful sunny day outside.

Just the best.

Day two better be good to me.

I think today's the day.

I think it's gonna happen.

Let's call this the balanced version

and if it doesn't work out

then I'll call it the unbalanced version.

I think I'm gonna do a weight measurement for this.

It ensures accuracy.

153 grams of AP flour, 153 grams of corn meal.

I'm gonna take down the baking soda

because yesterday there was some overflow

so I definitely need to reduce the amount of liquid.

I'm reducing one of the eggs and sour cream.

Half a cup only.

It's because I don't want a super greasy cake.

It is a little less wetter, which is great.

I think this is the one.

It's gonna work.

The oven looks perfect.

I hope it holds the temperature.

Let's mix this batter and get the bread in the oven.

I added a cup of milk in the low and slow version

and I'm reducing that by half.

There's enough gap here,

so I know it'll have like room to puff up

and the batter feels thicker,

so it's not too loose like it was yesterday.

I have my oven oven at 350, which is 25 degrees higher

than what it was yesterday.

My corn bread is in the oven and while that's happening,

I'm gonna make our hot honey butter.

We have a great hot honey butter recipe

on this site by Claire.

So that's what I'm gonna use today.

Gonna flash this for about 10, 15 seconds.

Half a cup of almost room temperature butter

and about three tablespoons of honey.

I'm using Crystal Hot Sauce.

You could use any hot sauce,

but I like using something that's super vinegary and punchy.

Whisk it altogether.

A little sprinkle of kosher salt, and this is great.

So we're done.

People can spread it on the bread as they eat.

It's been 40 minutes,

so I'm gonna check this bread to see where it's at.

It's still shaking in the center just a little bit

and I don't wanna take any chances,

so we're gonna let that bake for another five minutes

just to be safe.

I think this looks perfect. [gasps]

Yes.

Clean. [sighs]

Thank you.

I think this looks so good.

I'm very happy right now.

Should I name this the winner or it's too early for that?

The bread has been cooling down for about 25 minutes

and I'm going to run my knife and flip it over

so we can see what's going on inside.

Yes, it is perfectly golden brown all around

and that makes me so happy.

The color is perfect. Yeah.

I think it's like a really good in-between

of like dark tan, but not too tan.

So I wanted to achieve like at least two inches

and- It's exactly-

[Rachel] It's exactly two inches.

Okay, that looks perfect. Yes.

That looks perfect.

That texture looks incredible.

I feel like dense is seen as a bad thing,

but some cakes you want a density,

and this is dense, but still like open and fluffy.

It tastes like cheese, but it's not like intense cheese

in an overpowering way or like funky way.

[Rachel] And I made

hot honey butter. Oh my gosh.

Do you wanna try it with that?

That's it.

It's nice and bright.

I think this is such a great base-

Very great. in terms of flavor,

texture, color.

Nice.

Next I'm gonna try an upside down version.

I'm gonna add corn here-

Okay. then a caramel,

and then the batter. Like corn kernels?

Yes. Okay, this is cool.

I'm into it.

The winner, she won, she arrived.

Let's make corn bread again.

I'm gonna start mixing my dry and wet ingredients,

and then we're gonna make the caramel.

I'm gonna let this hang out for a bit,

and then prep my cake pan.

I think aesthetically, this might look prettier.

That's why I'm going for this.

I have a parchment paper here,

which I'm gonna cut into a square.

It's just so that the kernels don't stick to the actual pan

and we can have an easy flip.

And then make a little triangle like this.

And then I'm gonna flip this over

and measure it from the center

so we know exactly where to cut.

This is what you get.

Perfect circle.

If these are very yellow, then I might use fresh.

If these are not super yellow, then maybe not.

Do you think I should use fresh corn or canned corn?

Canned kernels are gonna be more prettier.

If you like dry them off.

Yeah, I think I wanna go with canned.

I'm just gonna take that in my hand

and squeeze out any excess water.

Not too hard though

'cause I don't wanna destroy the kernels.

And then I'm taking paper towels

and just dabbing any excess liquid out.

I'm gonna take about one cup of kernels

and spread it evenly at the bottom of this cake pan.

Just wanna make sure that the entire bottom is covered.

So now we're gonna go make the caramel.

I have an upside down plum cake recipe,

and in that I used half a cup of sugar

and three tablespoons of water.

So that's the ratio I'm using.

I'm gonna do about one teaspoon of kosher salt in this.

And the thing with caramel is that

you don't have to touch it.

You just gotta let it do its thing.

That needs to keep going for about seven to eight minutes.

A caramel is basically done.

It's nice and golden.

You wanna make sure that it goes everywhere on the corn.

Once this heats up,

it's gonna like spread out everywhere.

Now I'm gonna mix our dry ingredients

and our wet ingredients here for this batter,

evenly all over the corn.

Once you pour the batter in, just take the cake pan

and cap it.

That way if there are any air bubbles on the bottom,

they're gonna get filled out with the batter.

And now, we're gonna go and bake this.

So it's been going for about 40 minutes at 350.

It's clean, but we're gonna go for like three more minutes.

I think it's ready.

She is gorgeous.

I do need to let it cool for about 10 to 15 minutes,

and then we'll flip it over and do the reveal.

Oh my God. [chuckles]

That looks amazing.

I'm not gonna lie,

I thought that the kernels were gonna be yellow,

but this is even better 'cause it looks so caramelized.

It's beautiful.

Jesse.

Okay, this not what I was expecting, but it's beautiful.

It's crazy how well it worked.

Right? It came out perfect.

It did. Okay.

Wait. That does look perfect.

That looks really good.

So I'm gonna put a dollop of the hot honey butter

on that slice.

It's so good. It is so good.

[Jesse] It's really good

'cause the caramel's like taken very far,

so it's like not too sweet, smoky.

It's really good.

It's like the best spot for caramel to live.

This is a showstopper. She's a local.

She's a local. And she's a star.

Thank you, Jesse. No, thank you, this is-

For being my sounding bowl today.

This is like the only fun I had on this rainy day.

So thank you.

You can have that one. I will take it.

Yes.

After so many iterations, this is the one.

She is so fluffy and cheesy and caramelly.

Very unexpected, but delicious.

I'm so thrilled I took this journey and that I've arrived.

This is my cheesy upside down showstopper corn bread.

I lost sleep over this recipe.

No two bakes are the same.

No day is the same.

We get to cook different things

and we get to make them delicious and ready

so that you can cook them at home as well.

The work doesn't stop here.

I'm going to type it up and send it to a cross tester,

then it's gonna get edited and photographed.

And by the time you watch this,

this will already be uploaded on our website.

[playful music]