The Best Cornbread EVER -


I'm giving this post a header. It's just that important.

This is the best cornbread you will ever have in your entire life. Make some and eat it instantly. 

*cough* Now that we have that understood, I'm here to tell you that we have found the queen of all cornbread recipes. It is soooo so good. SO GOOD. And I've had my share of cornbread in my (almost) 24 years of lifetime. See how I am doing that "slide-into-your-next-year" thing? Yeah. It works for me. I've had really good cornbread where you muffled your praise around mouthful of delicious crumbs and rolled your eyes because it tasted so ridiculous, and basically ate 1/2 cup of food and 4 slices or muffins of cornbread because it was the best thing. :) And oh, cornbread. I love thee.

Cornbread is not something to be taken lightly, and it is extremely Southern. Perhaps not invented here, because we all know that cornbread was super important to the Indians and the Pilgrims and the Pioneers, but it sure has put down its roots here and those roots run deep. In fact. The best Southern restaurants are based upon how good their cornbread, swate tae, grits, biscuits, and BBQ is. It's true.

And there is a huge difference between cornbread and corncake, so on the cornbread spectrum (is there such a thing?), then this would be more defined as cornCAKE. :)

And I have loved me some cornbread over the years. I love CB cornbread, with its greasiness and texture, and I love some Smith family of J-ville (holla'!) cornbread (holy cow - yum), and I love Jiffy's cornbread muffins that we used to have when we visited Daddy's good friends in Savannah. Bob and Emmaline Cooper were their names, and we'd get to their huge and intriguing house with the wheelchair accessible stairway for her, and the wood workshop out behind the house for him, where he built model airplanes. It smelled like sawdust and wood and adventure in that workshop to an 8 year old. And I'd sit in the kitchen and watch Emmaline open up the box of Jiffy cornmeal mix and she'd say "and we'll have blueberry cornmuffins!!" with a shine in her eyes, and I'd grin back, all giddy with excitement.

Cornbread is either amazing ... or it's not. And it's somewhat like my lifelong search for the perfect Southern biscuit recipe to find the perfect cornbread recipe as well. :) One must have dreams for life ....

and recently within the past year, we've found this recipe, and we've all fallen in love with it. I'm not kidding when I say it is THE BEST cornbread I've ever had in my life. And our other cornbread recipe was SO GOOD. It is this light, sweet, cakey, yet still very much bread, fall apart perfect ... cornbread. 

Momma made it last night to go with turkey chili and when Dad and I saw the huge stoneware circle pan of it, we just stood there in thankfulness. Hahahah. We served it up and sat down and breathed in its steaminess, and you know how good it is? It doesn't need butter, and it doesn't need honey. Daddy didn't even put any sass (molasses) on his.

 Itisjustsoamazinglygood. 

In fact, last night - while we stuffed our faces with cornbread, I didn't even want to take a picture of it. I was too busy scarfing it down, spending quality family time eating cornbread, I mean. And then I had a genius idea. Cornbread. with coconut yogurt. and fresh strawberries. Dad looked at me with admiration in his shining eyes as he held a strawberry in one hand and a wedge of cornbread in the other. "GREAT idea." And so that's what I'm eating now. At ... 2:50pm on a Friday afternoon. For lunch/dessert/snack. So I took a few pictures. ;) 

The coconut yogurt really needs it's own blogpost (or like 19) since Becs got our family addicted to it. It's sold by Liberte' and if you have a Publix near you, then you can find it in the yogurt aisle. Be warned - you will be addicted to it and eat them like it's the only thing that tastes good and possibly gain some weight. but it's worth it - hahahaha! 


So here's the recipe, with the warning that if no one makes this - I.will.cry. That's a threat.
And thanks to my wonderful Momma who shares her recipes!! :)

- From the Tasha Tudor Cookbook -
"Great-Grandmother Tudor's Cornbread"
Makes 12 servings. 

* 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter; softened (we use salted)  
* 2/3 cup sugar
* 2 farm-fresh eggs, at room temp. separated
* 1 cup unbleached flour
* 3 tsp. baking powder
* 1/4 tsp. salt
* 1 cup milk, lukewarm
* 1 cup yellow cornmeal 

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Grease an iron cornbread pan that makes 12 sticks, or a muffin tin, with butter. (We use our circle Stoneware pan, you could also use a cast iron skillet) 

2. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar and add the egg yolks, slightly beaten. 
Stir well. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. 

3. Sift the flour with the baking powder and salt, then add it alternately with the milk to the creamed butter.
 Stir in the cornmeal, then fold in the beaten egg whites. 

4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 25 mins. until beautifully browned. 

and then enjoy eating it. Because that's the main thing. :)


YUM. If you were Hawaiian you would say it would be Onoliscious, which means Overly Delicious. :)


So go make some. ASAP - As Soon and as Southern as Possible. :)
and if you do make it, come back heah and tell me how much you loved it!! :)
Love y'all!!!
~ Jean Marie ~

Comments

  1. Well ma'am, I thought I'd tell ya
    that I made the above recipe this afternoon and it sure is delicious:) Love it!!!! Thanks for sharing:D

    ReplyDelete
  2. That looks extremely similar to my mom's recipe for cornbread; she found a humdinger of a recipe some time back, changed it up a little and we've been enjoying it since. Thanks for sharing your recipe...the pictures are fabulous!

    ReplyDelete

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