Sweet Cast Iron Cornbread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Is cornbread better in cast iron? ›

Use cast iron

In fact, we've got a whole conversion article to help you make our cornbread mix in whichever pan is your favorite! Cast iron works best because it gets hot and stays hot, helping your cornbread to cook evenly and giving it that tasty crispy, golden-brown crust you know and love.

A quick Google search will tell you that Southern cornbread is oftentimes devoid of any sugar, while its Northern counterpart is light, sweet, buttery and cakelike.

Sugar in the cornbread interferes with the flavor of the vegetables. Don't put sugar in your cornbread! Traditional cornbread isn't sweet, but many favorite recipes have sugar in them.

I love to bake from scratch, but I have often used packaged cornbread mix, adding a little extra something to the ingredients and making the finished product taste more homemade. My favorite thing to add is sugar—a hot topic for another conversation!

For one, cast iron pans aren't perfectly smooth and foods like eggs may get stuck. For the best results, make sure to keep your cast iron pan seasoned, and preheat the skillet for a few minutes before you add any food to it. This allows the pan to heat evenly and prevents most food from sticking. Add fat as needed.

The most common reason food sticks to cast iron is because the pan is simply too hot. Because cast iron retains heat much better than other types of cookware, you generally don't need to use as high of a heat setting as you normally would with stainless steel or aluminum cookware.

It is commonly called "cornbread" in the Southern United States and is not known by a different name in this region. Cornbread is a simple bread that is made by mixing cornmeal, flour, salt, baking powder, and milk to form a batter, which is then baked in the oven.

For people who prefer cornbread without much sugar: Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix.

Southerners, on the other hand, tend to prefer white cornmeal. Many people believe that it is because, in the old South, families used white cornmeal as it more closely resembled “fancy” European wheat flour. In any case, today it remains a main component in traditional Southern buttermilk cornbread.

The exact nutritional profile of cornbread can vary depending on the specific recipe and ingredients used. However, cornbread generally contains high amounts of carbs, phosphorus, and sodium in each serving. One piece of cornbread prepared from a commercially prepared mix contains ( 2 ): Calories: 198.

What is the difference between New York cornbread and southern cornbread? ›

A typical contemporary northern U.S. cornbread recipe contains half wheat flour, half cornmeal, milk or buttermilk, eggs, leavening agent, salt, and usually sugar, resulting in a bread that is somewhat lighter and sweeter than the traditional southern version.

Neither cornmeal, sugar or "flour" (which is non specified so am assuming its wheat flour) are suitable for type 2 diabetics. Use a natural sugar substitute and the recipe might work with buckwheat flour perhaps?

The extra egg which is increased protein and binder makes the cornbread denser and heavier in texture. Can I add flour to Jiffy cornbread to make more batter? When making jiffy mix cornbread, what if I don't have milk? Are there any rules to making the best cornbread?

Heat and spices

You can stir in 1 cup of roasted chopped jalapeños or 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes or cayenne into the batter. Or, you can mix in 3 tablespoons of your favorite chile paste. Fields also recommends trying a little NOLA flair by adding a rounded ¼ teaspoon Cajun spice blend to your cornbread mix.

Sugar Is Optional

The choice is yours as to whether or not to include it. (See this excellent article from Serious Eats on why traditional southern cornbread does not include sugar.)

A cast iron skillet is your best choice for cornbread

The benefit of using cast iron is that it retains heat really well, helping to make the batter nice and crispy around the edges. Cast iron can also withstand abrupt temperature changes better than glass.

But there's one dish that nothing but a cast iron skillet will do: cornbread. Why? If you bake it in anything else cornbread will not achieve the desired crispy crust.

But the real magic comes from the cast-iron Dutch oven, the perfect vessel for baking bread. It acts like an oven-within-the-oven, maintaining a high and steady heat that transforms this sticky dough into a gorgeous round loaf with a crisp crust and excellent crumb structure.

When cooking cornbread in a cast iron skillet, it's important to preheat the skillet at a high temperature at 425 degrees F. This gets your skillet good and hot for it to create those gorgeous crispy edges, in case you can't you tell how obsessed I am with these perfect edges.