Bread/ Muffins

Honey Jalapeño Cornbread

Cornbread meets a plate of veal sweetbreads.

And you thought you knew cornbread.

Cornbread is a quick bread made with cornmeal, flour and some leavening and there are so many types of cornbread that come from soul food country in the south to a sweet cornbread from Texas. Two things I was disappointed in when we moved to Texas were the BBQ sauce (not hot but sweet) and the cornbread (not course in texture but more sweet and cake like).

I’m sure there are just as many ways to use/eat cornbread as there are recipes out there. My grandfather use to crumbled up cornbread into a big stemmed glass full of full fat cultured buttermilk that would go klug, klug when it was poured because it was that clabbered. And what would our thanksgiving dressing be without cornbread for your stuffing mixture; cornbread salad is a wonderful salad for the summer that is layered with beans, lettuce and other ingredients; and I have even used thin slices of cornbread cut in triangles as a base for an appetizer using smoked pork tenderloin and then topped with mango salsa.

Just as there are a million recipes and uses for cornbread there are just as many shapes it can be bake; in an iron skillet, muffins, corn sticks, fried in a skillet, spoon bread, cactus shaped, and I even have an iron skillet that is divided into individual wedges. I also have these tiny loaf pans that are 1″x3″ which make adorable (if you can say that about cornbread) little loaves.

To me there’s nothing better with cornbread than a big bowl of white beans with a spoon of chow chow on the side. But, on a recent trip to Chicago we had dinner at Leopold’s, which is a Belgian food inspired restaurant. We had a wonderful honey cornbread to go with some fried veal sweetbreads (thymus or pancreas glands) served with a mustard gravy and that was the cornbread that inspired me to come up withethics recipe.

Whether you are having a bowl of beans, soup, a vegetarian meal or just about anything you set before you to eat, a good piece of this cornbread in my opinion would be the finishing touch to your meal.

Now, before you rinse out that bowl that you made your cornbread in, (basic cornbread recipe) try this. My mother use make stewed potatoes, and she would cut up the potatoes in chunks, boil until tender and as always with this type of meal she would make a pan of cornbread. Before washing out that bowl, she would add maybe 1/4 cup of water in the bowl and stir in any of the batter left in the bowl and then pour this into the potatoes that still had the water in them and continue cooking several minutes which thickens the potato water making almost a sauce to go with the potatoes. You may try pouring out (and saving) some of the liquid and then you can always add it back in if needed.

This is a delicious cornbread recipe and I decided to make a Lime Butter and have included a recipe for that also. You can tweak this recipe however you want. Maybe add two jalapenos or even some cheese.

Pretty simply ingredients for such a delicious bread.

Cast iron corn stick pans make crispy little sticks. Make sure you grease well and heat before adding your cornbread batter.

The madeline pans made shell shaped muffins which would be great for a lady’s luncheon bread.

These are my tiny little loaf pans.  they are about 1″ wide by 2 1/2″ long.  Cute, cute, cute.

Softened butter mixed with lime zest and some honey.

Garnish with lime slice.

Honey Jalapeño Cornbread

Ingredients

  • 1 cup yellow cornmeal
  • 1 c. all purpose flour
  • 1 Tbsp.baking powder
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 1/2 c. buttermilk or whole milk or cream
  • 2 Tbsp. mayonnaise
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 stick butter melted
  • 1/4 c. honey
  • 1 ear sweet corn kernels cut off
  • 1 jalapeño pepper  finely minced
  • Lime butter recipe below

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 425 °
  2. In a mixing bowl, mix the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt. In a second bowl mix together the milk, eggs, butter, mayonnaise, and honey.  Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just blended and stir in the minced jalapeños and the corn kernels.
  3. Grease pan of your choice. Fill about 1/2 way full.
  4. Muffins will take 15 minutes to bake, a 9" iron skillet may take 20-25 minutes to bake. Test doneness with toothpick or just bake until golden brown.
  5. Muffins bake 15 minutes until golden brown.
  6. Lime Butter
  7. 1/2 c. butter, softened
  8. zest from one lime
  9. 1 Tbsp. honey, optional if you want more honey taste to your cornbread
  10. Mix up the butter and the lime zest and set aside until you are ready to serve the cornbread.

1 Comment

  • Reply
    White Bean Soup with Ham «
    January 26, 2015 at 5:01 am

    […] FROM THE PAST:  Honey Jalapeño Cornbread was posted back in June 2012 and you may like it to go with this bowl of […]

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