I like cornbread, but for years I was no damn good at baking it. It tasted fine, cornbread’s hard to screw up that way, but it was crumbly as hell. Impossible to spread stuff on. The only way I could get it tolerable was to make muffins out of it.
Then, on a dark and stormy night in an eldritch and forgotten land, a priestess of some dark, forbidden god led me into the catacombs beneath her bloodstained temple. Following a night of evil rites it would not be proper for me to describe in a family setting, she imparted to me the secret, handed down through endless generations of the leaders of her cult. As if it were yesterday I can still hear her shriek, transported by her foul passions, the secret to life, the Universe, and non-crumbly cornbread:
FORGET THE MILK!
It is a secret I now pass on to you. Yeah, it’ll cost you your soul but you weren’t really doing anything with it, were you? Souls are overrated, take it from me.
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup cornmeal
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 egg
- 6 tbsp cooking oil
- 1 can creamed corn
Preheat oven to 425. Mix all dry ingredients. Mix in the egg, the oil, and the creamed corn. Stir till thoroughly mixed. Pour batter into iron skillet. Stick the skillet into the oven. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool slightly before slicing.
It’s moist. It’s tasty. It’ll take butter. And the best part is you need to eat it up quick because it won’t last in hot weather.
Eat!
Over the last fifty or so years I’ve made enough cornbread to feed an Army…always with milk, but tonight I shall use creamed corn. What a great idea. Thanks, Joel.
…and if you should dare, replace the oil with applesauce. Bwah Bwah Bwah.
Heatherns!
Cornbread should never have flour in it. Nor sugar for my yankee friends.
1 cup cornmeal self rising
1 egg
enough buttermilk to mix well. Just wet enough to pour out of the bowl into a warmed cast iron skillet.
salt and pepper if you like
Warm the skillet on top eye just enough to get the bacon grease to coat the pan really well (you want just a little depth to it)
Pre heat oven to 425
spoon or pour mix into middle of skillet (it should level out or you can smooth it out)
place on middle rack in oven until top starts to brown.
remove, turn over onto plate. It should drop out. If stuck a knife or spatula will help
serve with generous portions of cow butter
And, about the time you were getting this lesson, I was motivated to make some cornbread.
Two new constraints: girlfriend has developed a problem with wheat, and daughter has developed a problem with lactose.
So… no flour; double cornmeal; usual quantities of baking powder, salt, sugar, and oil; two eggs instead of one; and a moderate slosh of almond milk, as long as it was there.
Came out tasty, if rather dense. Held together about as well as my standard recipe (which involves flour and milk).
Yes, I’m a heathen. I make California-style cornbread, with sugar and sometimes vanilla! (Sometimes I use maple sugar, which could make it either Vermont-style or Dendarii-style, depending). But at least I grow my own meal corn.
Oil & sugar? Sacrilege! Leave the sugary cornbread to the Yankees, & use lard, or bacon grease.