Chris Rock once said, “Cornbread, ain’t nothing wrong with that!” And he was right! I love good cornbread. My youngest wanted ribs for dinner one night recently, so I thought we should have a bbq night at our house. We made baked beans, coleslaw, ribs, corn on the cob, and cornbread. It was super delicious, and we had the good fortune to have leftovers to enjoy later!
I once again looked to Wikipedia to give me some background on cornbread and its history. Like baked beans, cornbread has roots in our first nations people in the southern USA. European settlers learned and replicated a few dishes shared with them from the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Muscogee Creek. Cornbread batter can either be baked or fried for a delicious treat. Baked is the cornbread as we know it; fried is closer to a corn fritter.
When I was in culinary school, I can recall adding pieces of corn, red peppers, and jalapenos to our cornbread. I made it plain for this recipe, but you can absolutely add in a few other ingredients. Like many breads, cornbread can be sweet or savoury depending on the sweetener you want to use. A slight increase in sugar, or trade for honey, and you have a sweeter cornbread. If you reduce the sugar, it will be more savory. You also have multiple cooking vessels and methods at your disposal. I chose to cook it in my 12” cast iron pan, which wasn’t quite big enough for the whole recipe, and I should have used a 14” or larger, but you can also use muffin trays or a 9”x13” pan. I also chose to bake in my bbq rather than my oven because it was super hot outside when I made this recipe.
I hope you enjoy making this recipe!
Cornbread
Ingredients:
2 ½ cups of flour
2 ¼ cups of cornmeal
½ cup of sugar
2 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp fine salt
3 eggs
2 ¼ cups milk
1 cup of canola oil
Directions:
- Preheat your oven to 400°
- Grab some pan spray and spray a 9×13 baking dish, a muffin tray, or a 12-14” cast iron pan.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
- In a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients.
- Whisk the wet into the dry and mix until thoroughly combined. Lumps are ok.
- Pour the batter into your cooking vessel and bake for 30 – 35 minutes.
- Use a toothpick to check if the batter is fully cooked. Insert it into the very center of the cornbread and pull it out. If the toothpick is clean, the bread is done; if it is not clean, cook an additional 5 minutes until the toothpick comes out clean when you test it.
- Once cooked, allow the cornbread to cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then turn it out onto a wired rack to finish cooling for another 10-15 minutes.
- Cut and dig in!