Here in the American South, cornbread can be a tricky thing to bring up. People are very, very opinionated about every single aspect of it – how sweet should it be? should it be sweet at all? what grind of cornmeal is best? what ratio of cornmeal to flour should you use? should there be cheese/jalapenos/corn kernels in it? I have my answers and the recipe I’ve developed based on my opinions, but I’ll also share how you can adjust my recipe to make YOUR perfect cornbread!

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My Recipe

For me, the perfect cornbread is slightly sweet, has some corn kernels distributed throughout, is nice and moist, and has a beautiful whipped honey butter to go with it. So, that’s the cornbread I’ve made! Let’s look at the components:

• the cornmeal: I used a finely ground cornmeal partly because it will result in teh moistest cake and also because it’s what I had in the pantry! A more course cornmeal will result in a slightly crumblier cornbread, which isn’t necessarily bad!
• the cornmeal/flour ratio: I used a 1:1 ratio partly get ensure it’s nice and moist and also because I thought it tasted the best. If you want something with a more corn-forward flavor, you can increase the amount of cornmeal and decrease the amount of flour, as long as you still have the same total amount you should be just fine
• the sugar: I have a small amount of sugar in mine so it’s slightly sweetened. This won’t be cake-like, but it’ll have a hint of sweet!
• the corn: I love when cornbread has corn kernels in it, so that’s what I did! You can use fresh, canned, or frozen, whichever you’ve got
• the whipped honey butter: I love a nice, sweet honey butter with a cornbread! It adds to the overall sweetness and bring a nice additional moistness to the whole situation

Variations

There are lots of directions you could take this! Let’s look at a few:

• cake-like: if you like a really sweet, almost cake like cornbread, you can increase, maybe even double, the amount of sugar in this recipe
• savory: if you like a savory cornbread, you can leave out the sugar and add in some grated cheese, diced jalapeno, and/or any spices you might like in it! Get creative with the mix ins, I’m sure even bacon would be tasty. You really can’t go wrong, it’ll be so good with whatever!
• muffins: you can also make these as muffins, with a slight tweak! Instead of adding butter to the preheated pan, melt it and add it into the batter before portioning among 12 lined muffin cups. Keep the same cooking temp and decrease the time but look for the same cues for doneness

That’s it! I hope you use this recipe to make your perfect cornbread 🙂