Sunday, February 27, 2011

Let Them Eat ... Cornbread

Thought I would share my recipe for cornmeal muffins/bread.  It's loosely dervied from the Purity Cornmeal Bread recipe that used to be on the package 30 years ago.  For the longest time, I used a blue teacup with a broken handle as my measuring cup, but it finally completely broke, so my recipe is based on whatever cup I have to hand, and the ingredients are in fractions of that cup.

Preheat the oven to 375F for a loaf, or 400F for muffins.  Make sure the rack is in the middle of the oven.

In a largish bowl, put in 1 cup each of cornmeal and flour.  Add 1 spoon of baking powder (sized to match the amount of dry ingredients), salt, and about 1/4 - 1/2 cup sugar.  At this point, you can add 1/2 to 2/3 a cup of chopped dried or fresh fruit, kernel corn, onions, peppers, or whatever for either a sweet or savoury muffin.

In the cup, break 1 large egg (or 2 small eggs), and add enough oil to make 2/3s of the cup.  Add to cornmeal-flour mixture.  Add 1+ cups of canned milk (other milk will do but it changes the flavour); basically the amount will be a little more than 1 cup, aiming for a batter which is somewhat thicker than the usual muffin batter.  Finish with vanilla extract to taste. 

This batter should make about 1 doz. regular sized muffins, and takes between 14-17 minutes to bake, depending on the humidity, the oven and how large the muffin tins are.   Alternatively, you can make a loaf (in a largish bread pan), and it will bake in approximately 18-22 minutes.

They freeze well; however, for at hand eating, once they are completely cooled, put them in a closed container or a baggy.