Cornbread and Corn Muffins from Scratch

Book:  I finished “Leaving Time” by Jodi Picoult… since my library gives me ONE week to read this particular book or suffer $1 per day!  But I can’t say anything about the ending or that might ruin it for you and you do NOT want to have the ending ruined in this book.  I probably won’t even do it at Book Club because if someone doesn’t finish it and we talk about the ending, well, I would feel just terrible.  Like telling someone who’s never seen Star Wars – “Hey, by the way, Darth Vader is Luke’s father.”  (Sorry to break that to any newbies out there…)

So go read it.  Yeah it’s like 400 pages, but it will fly by while the kids watch extra episodes of Pokemon.

Recipe:  It is actually scary or sad I have over 500 recipes on this website.  And when I went to search for plain ol’ cornbread I turned up empty handed.  Well that is because I labeled one of my very first posts ever as “corn muffins”.

Have you looked at the ingredients on the Jiffy box?  “America’s Favorite”?  Now, I am not totally against lard.  I get it – it’s natural and fat and necessary for things.  But Jiffy hydrogenates it and if that wasn’t shelf stable enough, Jiffy partially hydrogenates it as well.  Not to mention the BHT, BHA and tocopherol.  Silicon Dioxide is being used here as an additive instead of naturally occurring – also totally unnecessary unless you want to extend your shelf life.  By the time you add the milk and eggs, you might as well spend the extra 3 minutes to make your own!  They so much better and might as well make 12 of them instead of the 6 that Jiffy gives you in a box.

Don’t have cornmeal?  No problem!  It is with the flour in the grocery store.  Mine comes in a canister and the only brand available is by Quaker.  Don’t know what else to use it for?  You could always store it in the freezer.  I use it under my pizzas to keep them from sticking.  If you look under restaurant pizzas, you’ll notice little yellow things on the bottom coming off – that’s cornmeal.  Or make maple cornbread.  Or put a cornbread topping on your skillet dish like in Skillet Tamale Pie.

This is one of my friends favorite recipes, too!  As you can tell, it is more of a northern cornbread recipe.  This is what I’m used to in St. Louis, Missouri.  Most southern cornbread recipes will have little to no sugar in them.

Cornbread or Corn Muffins
serves 12

Corn Muffins
yield 12 standard muffins or 24 mini muffins

1 cup flour
1 cup cornmeal
1/3 cup sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 egg, beaten
1 cup milk
1/3 cup melted shortening, margarine or butter

Spray a muffin pan with non-stick cooking spray – either a 12 cup muffin pan or 24 mini muffin pan. Or, heat a 10″ cast iron skillet in the oven.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a great big bowl, mix the dry stuff together: flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt.
In a not so great big bowl, mix the wet stuff: egg, milk and melted butter.
Add wet stuff to dry stuff. Gently mix – do NOT over mix. Leave a few crumbs of dry flour.
Divide among the muffin wells, or butter the hot cast iron pan and pour batter into the pan.
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Add the wet and just mix to combine. Don’t overmix.
Bake 15-20 minutes for muffins. Mini ones take about 10-12 minutes. Cast Iron Skillet takes 20-25 minutes.

This recipe also doubles nicely.
Freezer friendly, too! Just bake, cool, and freeze.