Recipes for Cornbread-A Southern Staple Food!

I'm not sure about you, but I grew up in the South. Sweet tea, black-eyed peas, cornbread, fried okra, grits-all Southern staple foods. My mother brought quite a few recipes with her from Arkansas, where she grew up. There are quite a few to choose from, but one of my favorites is her recipe for old-fashioned cornbread. The closest I've been able to come to it in the 'restaurant world' is at Cracker Barrel; unlike other restaurants that use sugar in their cornbread, Cracker Barrel keeps it tasting the way it should-like bread! Whichever way you like it, it's still pretty easy to make your own old-fashioned, Southern-style cornbread at home. Here is a good and easy recipe that doesn't take a whole lot of time to make.

You're going to need:

2 cups corn meal (my favorite is Dixie Lily)

2 eggs

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 cup water

½ cup milk (you can also use buttermilk)

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup melted butter (optional)

If you still want to use sugar, 1 tablespoon will do.

To make muffins, preheat your oven to 450º. Grease a muffin tin and put it into the oven to warm while you're mixing the rest of the ingredients. You can also just use an ordinary greased baking pan.

First, beat the eggs in your mixing bowl. Add the other ingredients and stir until well mixed. I like to use the melted butter in the batter because a) it helps the consistency of the mix, and b) it cuts down on the need to put butter on it later. My husband likes to take some to work for lunch, and it's easier if he doesn't have to bring butter with him. Take the pan out of the oven and pour the batter in. Bake it until it is golden brown in color-usually about 20-25 minutes. I like to leave it in until the edges are a bit crispy...mmm!

Here's another interesting variation on the recipe. If you don't have time to bake it, just drop ¼-cup amounts of the batter into a lightly-coated frying pan or griddle and cook it as you would a pancake. Butter or drops of vegetable oil are good greasers for the pan, but butter-flavored cooking spray can help save some calories. You're probably not too concerned about that since cornbread isn't exactly a low-calorie food, but every little bit can help!

I hope you'll enjoy my favorite recipe for Southern-style cornbread. Thanks to Cracker Barrel, you don't have to travel all the way down here if you want to sample our wide range of culinary delights! Even if you don't have one where you live, there are all kinds of websites that feature Southern recipes. Since this is a recipe blog, I'll try to dig up some more of my mom's old recipes to share with you. As for one particular 'Southern' concoction-

Sorry, I don't have a recipe for 'moonshine'. You're going to have to go somewhere else for that one!