Corn Bread Eatin'

I am pathologically incapable of making cornbread. I can't even make bad cornbread. The bricks I turn out are barely capable of being categorized as food. I've tried yellow cornmeal, white cornmeal, medium grind, fine grind, recipes with buttermilk, sugar, no sugar, honey, cheese, jalapeno peppers, and in one particularly unfortunate batch, corn kernels. I have tried every conceivable ratio of flour to cornmeal. I've heated butter in a cast iron skillet and then fastidiously poured in the batter. I've kept copious notes on attempts since I got my first apartment in 1995 - always with optimistic suggestion for future trials (add an egg! increase sugar to 1/2 cup!) confident that the next try will yield results.

What is so irritating about this predicament is that I consider myself a fairly accomplished home cook. I can make baklava and chicken cordon bleu for crying out loud! Why the perfect (or even the marginal) cornbread continues to elude me is a complete mystery. I guess I'll just keep making biscuits.

Amy's Biscuits

2 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda 2 Tbsp flax meal*
1 tsp kosher salt
6 Tbsp cold unsalted butter
3/4 cup buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 450 F. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Grate the cold butter into the flour mixture using a course kitchen grater. Rub the butter into the flour until evenly distributed. Do this quickly so your finger warmth doesn't melt the butter. Add most of the butter milk and stir with a wooden spoon until a stiff dough forms. You may or may not need the rest of the buttermilk. Pat the dough into a 6 to 8 inch square and wrap in plastic wrap or parchment paper. Let rest in the refrigerator for 20 minutes while the oven continues to preheat .

Unwrap the dough and place on a cookie sheet. Using a very sharp, non-serrated knife and even downward pressure, cut the dough into nine squares. Resist the urge to use a sawing motion - just go up and down, guillotine style. Do not separate the biscuits.

Bake for 10 minutes, then eparate the biscuits by about two inches (I usually burn myself at least twice doing this maneuver) and continue to bake until they are golden and the sides no longer look moist. About three more minutes. Serve piping hot with butter and honey. Who needs cornbread anyway?

*Optional. To offset the guilt of using white flour. You can also replace up to half the white flour with whole wheat pastry flour if you prefer, but the biscuits will be somewhat heavy.