Do you have a lot of failures and heartbreaks and
heartaches in recipe development. I spent the last two
days making 80 pieces of corn bread, a bottle
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. 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 going to show you how I developed
my cheesy upside down. Showstopper corn bread. I'm
going to take some creative liberties and I want to
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 want to 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 want to make sure that it has sufficient
height. So at least two inches, we're going
to make two base versions. One is going to
have the jiffy mix and the other version is going
to have our own mixture with a P 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 going to start by mixing the wet ingredients
for the version where I'm using the premade jiffy mix
for the corn pudding recipe that already exists. It
uses about three eggs, but I think that would
make the cornbread t to 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 butter. So
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 batter for the jiffy
mixture. And now I'm going to make the same
wet batter for my own mix. 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 1/4 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
. OK? So I'm gonna add 1/4 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 wine somewhere around 350 or 375.
The first ones going in this is using our Jiffy
corn bread mixture. I'm going to 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 sloths
that is going to 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 to 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, 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. It
will 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. Oh I think it
looks good. Clean cake tester means it's cooked all
the way through. Great. It's going my 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 was j 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 OK. 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 this? Sure. This one
, I made my own mixture of all the wet
ingredients are the same. OK. The dry ingredients
differ. If this is going to be a cheesy
corn bread, I wouldn't even mind like a little
bit more. I also wouldn't mind a slightly less
baked final product. It's like bordering on like dry
. But I really like the flavors. I just
want more flavor. 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 going to 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. So we're gonna
do one cup, all purpose flour, one cup
of cornmeal. 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 Laos a
bit because we are increasing all of the ingredients.
So there needs to be enough for everything to rice
. Two teaspoons of kosher salt. Initially, we
did one and I think that was not enough at
all. Now, I'm going to put together 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 going to up the yoga to 3/4 cup.
This I'm going to weigh I want to get the
measurement in grams just so that we're hyper accurate.
It could mess with the texture, it could mess
with how quickly the Conrad is browning. It could
mess with like how charred the edges get. And
I want to 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 at 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 going
to 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 see if that makes it rice to 400 which
is actually what we want. We have about 2
to 3 minutes left. But I'm not going to
wait. I'm just gonna get it out of the
oven because it's drowning 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 want to call it the
pumped version because this is the deflated version. This
is what recipe development will do to you. I'm
quite upset right now. See it's not OK.
You all, did you see that happen? It's
literally breathing. Come on 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're
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. These ovens have been brutal lately. Yeah
. So I feel like this probably went in a
hot oven and then it got cold. Yeah,
I think the flavor is 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 because this was only 25 minutes
, 40 minutes, 40 minutes. Let's go again
. I think you're close. Let's follow it the
low and slow for this next week. I'm going
to use a different oven and I'm going to change
the time and temperature. So I'm going to 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 is 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 through 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 rice which is like
giving it more of a rice and it's spilling out
. Oh No, that she's crunchy. It's clean
. I'm going to 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 cheese 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
its sinking in the middle. And that's what I
want to 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, if it allows. So there's lots to
do. But you know, 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 is 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
going to do a weight measurement for this. It
ensures accuracy. 100 and 53 g of A P
flour, 153 g of corn meal. I want
to take down the baking. So 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. 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 will 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 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 going to make our
hot honey butter. We have a great hot honey
butter recipe on this site by Claire. So that's
what I'm going to use today. Gonna flash this
for about 1015 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 all together. 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 want to take any chances.
So we're going to let that bake for another five
minutes just to be safe. I think this looks
perfect clean. Thank you. I think this looks
so good. I'm very happy right now. Should
I name this the winner? Oh, 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 exactly, it's
exactly two inches. Ok. That looks perfect.
That looks perfect. That texture looks incredible. I
think 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. And I made
hot honey butter. Do you want to try it
with that? That's it. It's nice and bright
. I think this is such a great taste in
terms of flavor, texture, color. Nice.
Next, I'm going to try an upside down version
. I'm gonna add corn here. OK. Then
a caramel and then the batter like corn kernels.
Yes. OK. This is cool. I'm into
it. The winner. She won. She arrived
. Let's make corn bread again. I'm going to
start mixing my dry and wet ingredients and then we're
going to 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 going to cut into a
square just so that the kernels don't stick to the
actual pan and we can have an easy slip 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 corners are gonna be more prettier
. 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
because I don't want to 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. I 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 use 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. 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 7 to 8 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, it's
gonna like spread out everywhere. Now, I'm gonna
mix our dry ingredients in our wet ingredients here for
this batter evenly all over the corn. Once you
pour the batter in, just take the cake pan
and tap it. That way. If there are
any air bubbles on the bottom, you'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. That looks amazing.
I'm not gonna lie. I thought that the kernels
were gonna be yellow, but this is even better
because it looks so caramelized. It's beautiful. Jesse
. Ok. This is not what I was expecting
, but it's beautiful. It's crazy how well it
worked, right. It came out perfect. It
did. Ok. 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. It's really
good because the caramel is 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. She's a star. Thank
you, Jessie. No, thank you for being
my sounding board today. This is like the only
fun I had on this rainy day. So thank
you. Yes. After so many iterations, this
is the one she is so fluffy and cheesy and
caramely. Very unexpected but delicious. I'm so thrilled
out of 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 going
to get edited and photographed. And by the time
you watch this, this will already be uploaded on
our website.