Baked Cheese Grits

I had to sneak this savory recipe into the book. Though, thematically, it is quite different from everything else in this book, grits—specifically these baked cheese grits—make up a large portion of my cooking and baking DNA. I was first introduced to grits—real stone-ground grits swimming in butter and cheese—while nursing a fairly nasty hangover during my first year of college at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship that has outlasted man