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Cornbread
(Picture courtesy of iwinatcookie at flickr.com.)
The best known of all the quickbreads, cornbread is one of dishes I am sure is American as apple pie. Of course, corn was a product of the New World and therefore humble pie, indeed.
Something I’ve discovered lately is that you can butter the crock, and do this one slowly in the crockpot. It will cook verrrry slowly, and when it’s done it will have crusty corners, with an all moist interior.
When the kids were not eating veggies happily, I could tuck some into the cornbread and they’d munch them right up. Also, because it’s porous, the cornbread will absorb gravies and cream sauces, can be used as a base under creamed anything.
There are lots of basic recipes, and this one is among them.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
- 1 cup yellow cornmeal
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1 cup half and half
- ¼ cup melted butter or shortening
- ¼ cup honey
- ¼ cup sugar
Preparation:
- Preheat oven to 400° F.
- Sift together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt.
- Combine the half and half, eggs, fat, honey and sugar.
- Thoroughly grease and flour a 9″ × 9″ baking pan (or use a nonstick baking pan or a flexible silicone pan).
- Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ones and mix just until the flour is moistened, no more than ten seconds. The batter should be visibly lumpy — leave it that way! It’s extremely important not to overmix the batter.
- Once the liquid and dry ingredients have been combined, pan and bake the cornbread immediately.
TIP: The dry and wet ingredients, respectively, can be mixed in advance, but as soon as the wet and dry ingredients have been combined with each other, the liquid will activate the baking powder and the batter must be baked right away.
- Bake 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cornbread comes out clean and the edge of the bread starts to separate from the pan.
(Please note that the Microsoft Word programming as usual fouls up when it tries to tell us what we need to do, making the numbering a mess.)
Most likely your family has a favorite recipe, and I love the jalapeno added hot cornbread. They’re all good. I like to throw in onions and bell peppers, and of course the bacon lovers will want to have their crumbs of bacon in the batter too.
If you didn’t have cornbread stuffing in the turkey, make-up time is now, and you can throw in some leftover turkey if you like.
32 Comments
Cornbread, butter and maple syrup, and a tall glass of milk. So good for you. Morning Ruth.
Luckily, I do have some. Without the homemade maple syrup, sigh.
Good for us.
Wavelengths Ruth,
I had just mixed up a batch of Tassajara pancakes, substituting half of the flour with reground (in my manually operated corona stone mill) cornmeal, to make it a bit finer, and then substituting about 1/2 of the liquid with fresh made apple puree’ (food processor). Picked up some farm eggs yesterday for the recipe and we do have some fine Wisconsin Maple syrup and real butter on hand.
I logged in, giving my teen a bit more beauty sleep, the wireless modem was still blinking furiously when I went to bed, and here you were. Have not tried the cornbread in the crock pot but thanks for that idea.
Sounds wonderful. Lucky teen, too. Do you know, plugging in the crockpot has a stretching effect, time and energy, here, and of course doesn’t heat up the place in summer since I can plug it in out in the carport. The cornbread is quite nice, too. Give it a couple of hours.
Will do, I have a “ton,” of cast iron cookware and have done the cornbread variation in a covered dutch oven on the coals of a campfire, with coals piled on that raised lip of the cover. Always a treat. A slightly smaller cast stew kettle has a lid that fits one of my fry pans perfectly, and I’ve slow cooked various corn breads with ingredients in the regular oven.
Two lbs of cubed elk just went into the stew kettle to brown, veggies being added and garden potatoes later. Going out to sweep the first almost two inch snow fall off the walk. Comfort food for the season.
That sounds good, we’ll be right up.
Almost an overdose of good things. Yep, we’ll be right up.
It’s been a while since I last made cornbread but I do it in the iron skillet. I don’t have the recipe handy but I know I use bacon grease instead of butter or shortening and do it in the iron skillet I fried the bacon in.
I also don’t use sugar. I asked my father one time about sugar in the cornbread and he got this haughty expression on his face and replied, “It is cornbread, not corn muffins.”
I guess it is all that southern thing going on (in Kentucky)
That iron skillet is something I’d go back to if I were cooking for anyone but myself, and it’s nice that they seem to be in the stores when I start looking. I have mixed feelings about the sugar, but it worked to get my children eating it, so have to go along.
I guess I’ve already confessed to a cast iron fetish, yard-saled a two dollar, cast wok that gets outside use on a gas burner for various easy and quick stir-fry when I want to keep the house cooler in the worst heat of summer.
The trouble is that here, we are still under a burn ban. No outdoor cooking fires allowed.
Yum, I have been pining for some cornbread as the weather has been cooling down. I did make cornbread stuffing for TG. Delish.
Cornbread is one of my favorite foods – but not sweet cornbread – that’s not southern at all. Bacon grease is perfect.
I’ll give you the bacon ‘drippings’ as we called them. I can enjoy either one, myself, but sweet does appeal more to the kids in my experience.
We almost always had cornbread stuffing, growing up, and it’s my preference, too. Don’t know if its at all a regional version, but ours was chuck full of celery and onions too.
The other morning, my son took a pan off of the stove that had day old bacon grease left in it. I told him that when his grandmother was a little girl, they couldn’t afford butter and she put it on her bread. So, Sonny being the curious creature that he is, tried it. He said it wasn’t great, but that it wasn’t awful either.
Fried bread, in bacon drippings, is a favorite of mine. As a matter of fact, it’s good fried in olive oil too. We didn’t have butter when we were young, we had margarine, which was probably healthy, but also saved a bit.
We had margarine too, but also had a tub of bacon drippings as well for frying.
I’m going to show Sonny your cornbread recipe and hopefully he’ll make it. Oh, it’s going to be a fun winter. Soup and cornbread.
Thanks for another delightful Food Sunday, Ruth. You da bomb, gal.
I add whole kernel corn, minced onion, chopped jalapenos and shredded cheese to my cornbread. It horrified my dad when I did it but what horrified him more was when mine started being requested by the family in lieu of his.
Thanks for the recipe!
Oh, and I use brown sugar instead of white. Just a personal preference.
I probably have shared this story before, but I grew up in a margarine house too. My mother called the stuff “butter.” It was not until I went to college that I got real butter, and it was a revelation! I finally realized that the reason the toast was to die for at the sleepover next door was because it had butter on it. I had begged my mother to get the same grape jelly, and that did not make the toast any better at our house. Then I had her get the same cocoa. That did not work either. I never knew why, until I finally had real butter.
Good to hear, enjoy your souper food. Couldn’t resist, you know.
That cheese is something I will do to my own cornbread, not so much for other folks. Probably haven’t mentioned, there’s no white sugar here, I have to go get a bit when I have guests.
Yep, my mom called our sticks of margarine butter, too, but I learned somewhere along the way that it was not really butter. As the youngest, I probably was clued in by the older kids to keep me from embarrassing myself. When my own kids were growing up, I was a real stickler for having the real thing, then got more health oriented and less particular on the subject.
In the early sixties, my aunt and uncle who lived in Illinois, would “smuggle,” it over the border into WI by the case, when only real butter was allowed to be sold, here. I can’t help but think the hydrogenated vegetable oils were not as healthy as real butter, but I remember it being discussed as seriously less expensive to use. Outside for a bit.
Okay, back home from the store where I bought a fresh bag of corn meal. James says he wants to make it and of course he will add canned corn and hello? fresh jalapenos. Thanks, Peg, for that suggestion since Sonny is all about his home grown peppers.
Isn’t that funny that they needed to smuggle in margarine. That reminds me that at one time ‘bleached flour’ was considered desirable, so white bread was top billed.
How perfect, the homegrown hot peppers will be great.
And, people worry that the Universe does not want wonderful and great things to happen. And, since you know me, I don’t have to say No Snark Tag. A real gift for me to know you as a friend.
Thanks, back atcha. I am thinking this will be very good cornbread.
:) Yeaaaah.
Dear Ruth,
You might enjoy this recipe, it is from my Mother.
Put the cast iron skillet with shortening in the bottom in an oven at about 400F.
Take the white Pyrex mixing bowl with the yellow exterior and fill it with about that much stone ground white cornmeal. With a regular teaspoon add a slightly rounded mound of baking soda and a little less salt. One egg. Dollop of shortening. And enough buttermilk (not non-fat) and beat to the correct consistency. Pour the mixture into the skillet and bake until it is crusty on top and bottom. Left over buttermilk to be consumed by Dad stuffed with crumbled cornbread for late night snack.
I hope that gives you some LOLs this post-Thanksgiving season.