Cracklin' Cornbread

There were a lot of firsts this weekend and you know fried chicken was one of them. Cornbread was another one. I've never made cornbread from scratch. In fact, I've only ever used those little jiffy boxes and made corn muffins. They aren't very good actually. When I brought up my theme idea to my beeps (bakespace peeps - I know, I know, we're corny) they immediately had a ton of suggestions for me. One of them was cornbread and then to make it even better DD of DDPie's Slice suggested cracklin' cornbread. As soon as I saw that I knew it had to be on the menu. What is cracklin' cornbread you ask? Well, corbread with bacon in it, of course!

I followed the recipe that DD gave me and next time I'll only make two slight changes. The first would be to use the full amount of sugar. The recipe suggests 2-4 tsp and DD suggested that if I use the bacon I may not want it to be as sweet. I think I'd like the taste of sweet and salty together so I will try the full amount (I only used 2 tsp) next time. Keep in mind that cornbread isn't supposed to be as sweet as a corn muffin but I just like it sweeter. The second change I would make would be to take out the bacon and mix it with the batter and then pour it into the cast iron skillet. All the bacon stayed on the bottom and I imagined it throughout the cornbread. That's it. It was very moist, tasty and easy! Thanks DD!



Corn Bread

By: DD of DDPie's Slice

Ingredients:

1 cup Quaker or Aunt Jemima Yellow or White Corn Meal
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 to 4 tablespoons sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 large egg, beaten
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425F

Place all dry ingredients into a mixing bowl and stir together. In a seperate bowl, whisk together milk, egg and oil. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the milk mixture. Stir together quickly.

Pour into a greased pan and bake in hot oven for 20-25 min until golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

For Cracklin' Corn Bread:

I always use my iron skillet for corn bread. I dice then fry about 3-4 pieces of bacon until crispy. I pour off excess grease, leaving only about 2 tbsp of the bacon grease in the pan with the bacon. Mix corn bread according to directions and immediately pour into the HOT skillet containing the bacon. Place in oven and bake accordingly.

FYI- if you are making regular corn bread, the key is the hot skillet. So when I'm doing "plain" cornbread, I put the skillet in the oven with a couple of tbsp of melted shortening in the skillet and let it get hot while mixing the corn bread. Then pour it into the hot skillet.