Corn Bread

[MadClikr]

Corn Bread

This corn bread is great when served with chili, or simply by itself with lots of butter! Yum!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 shortening or vegetable oil

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients.
3. In a medium sized bowl, mix together the wet ingredients.
4. Add the liquid ingredients mixture to the dry ingredients, stir to combine.
5. Pour into a greased 8x8 or 9x9 baking dish (or, just fry up some bacon in your cast iron, drain off a little bit of the extra grease, and use the frying pan as a baking dish - that's what I do - it makes for easy clean up, and is one less dish to wash later)
6. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the brown is golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

[MadClikr]

I made up a batch of this to serve with chili for dinner tonight, yum! If you like yours a bit sweet, try upping the sugar to 1/3 cup or so...

For variety, you could also add chopped bacon and/or chopped jalapenos to the mixture. While shopping today, I also saw a version with dried cranberries, though I haven't tried it yet.

[mspete]

try this: Bake the cornbread, spread very thick chili on it, top with cheese and return to oven until cheese is melted. Or spread with prepared taco meat, add shredded cheese, lettuce, chopped onion, tomato & salsa (I like to serve with sour cream on the side)

[MadClikr]

It's getting cold outside, time to bring out the soup, chili, and cornbread recipes! I've played around a lot with this recipe since it was originally posted back in 2007 (it's hard to believe that it's been that long!). I like my cornbread sweet, and so I up the sugar a bit as mentioned earlier, about 1/3 of a cup is good. I also like to add frozen corn which has been defrosted (about a cup). For a little heat, you can add chopped peppers, red pepper flakes, cayenne powder (a little goes a long way), or even your favorite hot sauce - just whatever you have on hand. Bacon is good too, you can cook in the skillet, drain out some of the grease, and re-use the skillet for the bread.

I had forgotten about the cranberry version... maybe I'll try making that, this year!

[Trudy in Illinois]

When my chili is finished cooking, I whip up a batch of cornbread and put it on the top of the chili. Then I put the lid on the pot and let the cornbread cook. When it is done, I put shredded sharp cheddar cheese on it and scoop it out of the pot with the chili. YUMMMM-OOOO.

[mspete]

Try cooking the bacon to "crispy" in iron skillet, remove bacon & crumble into small pieces. Pour off excess fat from skillet, add crumbled bacon to cornbread mixture, bake as usual. Yum!

In the south we can buy cracklins to add to cornbread. These are really good too. When I was a child we lived on a farm. We slaughtered hogs and "cooked out" our own lard and the cracklins left from this process were soooooooo good. I love cracklin cornbread, but I haven't had any in years!

[Trudy in Illinois]

I have just about drowned reading all these cornbread cookin's. I could gargle right now!!