Softening Brown Sugar & Sweet Cornbread Cake

Today I did two pins: Softening Brown Sugar and Sweet Cornbread Cake.

We had friends over for dinner and when I pulled out my brown sugar to use in my dessert, this is what I found: hard, rock-like sugar.  I even tried smashing it on my kitchen tile and this is the best that I got!  Quickly, I looked up ways to soften brown sugar, but I didn't have time to put in a piece of bread, or apple slice, or citrus peel.  I was so happy when I found this Softening Brown Sugar pin, you use aluminum foil wrapped around your sugar and pop it in the oven @ 300 degrees for 5 minutes and, voila!  Check out the difference!  I was able to use my fingers to break up my rocky lumps!  What a neat kitchen trick!  My girlfriend said that she does this, sans foil, in the microwave.  Who knew?

For our dinner, we were in charge of making cornbread to go with Chicken Tortilla Soup.  I was really excited to find a new cornbread recipe, you see, I used to work at Marie Callender's in college and I loved LOVED their cornbread.  I guess the restaurant recipe has yellow cake mix in it.  Not having yellow cake mix and not wanting to run to the store, I found this Sweet Cornbread Cake recipe and gave it a whirl.  It made a 9*13 pan and was one of those wonderful "one bowl, just add everything together" type of recipes.  It got rave reviews from our dinner guests, and I liked it, but I'm going to try adding more sweetness.  My church does a Chili and Cornbread Cook-off every year, and I think my experimenting with this recipe will end up being made and brought to that event!