Fried Cornbread Cakes

We had a garden supper last night of pinto beans (I cheated, and opened a can of them), boiled new potatoes, sliced onions, and sliced tomatoes from our garden, and roasted zucchini from our neighbor's garden. She also gave us a quart of fresh-picked tame blackberries for dessert.

I knew the only thing missing was cornbread, but it was too hot to heat up the oven so I made my Mom's old standby, fried cornbread. I think some people call them corn cakes. Here's the recipe for any of you who have never tried them.

Fried Cornbread Cakes

1 c. cornmeal
2 Tbsp. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg
1 tbsp. melted bacon grease or oil
1/2 c. milk (or more to thin to medium batter consistency)
Bacon grease or oil for frying

Mix cornmeal, flour, baking powder and salt in small mixing bowl.

Mix egg, milk, and fat in measuring cup or bowl and pour into cornmeal mix. Stir just until dry ingredients are moistened. Do not overbeat and do not stir mixture down each time you cook another cake.

Heat bacon grease or oil in skillet or griddle and pour or spoon in small amounts of batter to make six-inch cakes. Cook like pancakes, browning one side, then flipping over and cooking until cooked through.

Makes 4 six-inch cakes.

Recipe may be doubled, but one extra-large egg should still be enough.

We are *so* eating these tonight!

Very tasty. I thought these would be a lot like my favorite cornmeal pancake recipe, but they really are much more cornbready even if they do look like pancakes. Yum!
Thank you Ander, I'm keeping this one.

YUMMY!

my mom makes hot water cornbread similar to this. it is incredibly crunchy on the outside. I believe she uses cornmeal, hot water, salt, baking powder, mix, shape, fry.

Thanks, Chocolatepop, I'll give your version a try next time.

Except for the baking powder, your mother's recipe sounds like what we call hoe cakes. Supposedly they could be mixed up and placed on washed and greased hoes, then fried over an open fire when people were working in the fields chopping cotton. They could carry the ingredients with them to the field since none of them would spoil in the hot sun.

(Those won't work with SFG, though, will they? We don't carry our hoes to the garden anymore.)

I chopped cotton a few times when I was young. Didn't miss it a bit when my dad switched to the miracle of sprayed herbicides. Now I'm back to gardening organically. Funny how sometimes we have to go backward to move forward.

ander i called my mom and asked and she said the same thing! She said that she also made the cornbread pancakes, but i guess she calls them cornbread paddies. she uses her normal cornbread recipe and then fries it. it looks similar so im gonna try your recipe this week. we usually eat it with beef stew or cabbage, some times chili or fish

y'all are making me hungry!

The cornbread pancake recipe I use is straight off the Indian Head cornmeal package....though if I have some fresh (or frozen) corn kernels, scallions, cumin, or fresh cracked black pepper handy, they sometimes sneak into the mix.

pinto beans (I cheated, and opened a can of them), boiled new potatoes, sliced onions, and sliced tomatoes from our garden,

You can't get much better than good ol' country cookin'. DH has a gluten allergy & we use cornmeal in a lot of things, never thought about doing this. He will love it.

Dixie, I think you can completely omit the flour in this recipe with no problem at all. I think it helps make the cakes a bit lighter, but it's not necessary.

cornbread... funny how it varies with regions. i grew up in west georgia where we had buttermilk cornbread made with self rising meal.
i moved to southeast alabama in 1973. here they make unleavened cornbread- an oven cake of just plain meal and water in an oiled skillet. the other is extra fine plain meal mixed with ice water and a little salt the fried crisp in a cast iron skillet. its what dreams are made of!~ there is no "bad" cornbread

Saved and put into word document- Thanks!

carolyn.g.sullivan wrote:cornbread... funny how it varies with regions. i grew up in west georgia where we had buttermilk cornbread made with self rising meal.
i moved to southeast alabama in 1973. here they make unleavened cornbread- an oven cake of just plain meal and water in an oiled skillet. the other is extra fine plain meal mixed with ice water and a little salt the fried crisp in a cast iron skillet. its what dreams are made of!~ there is no "bad" cornbread

LOL...I know there are dialects in the south, but not versions of corn bread! The difference I'm most accustomed to is "North" vs "South." The Southern recipes uses just cornmeal and the Yanks add flour and sugar. Their's is more like cake.

Buttermilk adds to the levening (and great flavor).

Oh my goodness, adding sugar to cornbread is like adding it to grits == blasphemy!

If you don't want to diddle with hoecakes or want something a bit thicker for juice holding, mix your favorite cornbread recipe, pour into a hot, smallish, 8 or 9 inch skillet, to a depth of an inch and half or so, put a lid on. cook over medium heat (not as hot as for pancakes) until the underside is done, flip the whole thing. a nice wide spatula is handy for this kind of cornbread making.

Oooooh and then there's polenta. YUM!

Thought I would gag the first time I served grits to my "from Ireland" sister-in-law. She put strawberry jam on top.

Kay

This my first attempt at posting so if I "screw up" please forgive. I grew up in the
south and cornbread was what we call everyday food. The recipe that I us is
one that my Grandmother used. It came to her from her Grandmother. I am old
so you get the idea. True southern cornbread is always made with white cornmeal.
The reason is 2 fold. First when this bread was first made they had no wheat flour
so they used the next available grain. At that time white corn was for folks and yellow corn was for kriters. So always use white. The other reason is if you use
yellow meal you have to add a binding agent or it will crumbles badly. White is much finer and it needs no binding agent. We cooked it (fried or baked) in an
iron skillet. Most recipes don't say white or yellow. They should. They are very different.
Luke Allen

Hey Luke!



I didn't know that about corn meal. I just used whatever was in the pantry! Grits were always white...maybe that's why. I just assumed it was bleached from yellow!

Thanks for the recipe. I love cornbread (Yankee that I am, I like it sweet or plain), but can't make a full recipe or it will go stale. Married to a Texan, born & raised, who doesn't like cornbread. Can you believe it? This looks easy enough to halve and make 2 smaller cakes.

And I would like to say that I am one of those who put milk and sugar on my grits (also a dash of cinnamon). To me, it's a cereal (like cream of wheat) and that's how cereal is eaten. Your Irish SIL probably looked at it the same way. And since I am half Japanese, I will tell you that putting butter on rice is just wrong. I cringe every time I see someone doing that.

It's all in the way we are raised, isn't it?

This is the formula I grew up with. This is about 200 years old.

1 cup white cornmeal

1 cup buttermilk

1 large egg (2 if small)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 Tbs bacon grease

Make batter out of the first 5 things on list. Heat iron skillet and then add grease.

Pour batter into skillet and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Good served with

red beans on top.

Thank you for sharing this recipe Luke! It's wonderful to have time-tested recipes. I rarely make cornbread in the summer, mostly because I don't like to heat up the oven (and whole kitchen) just for cornbread. I never realized that it could be cooked in a skillet (yes I'm a yankee transplant). My very southern husband was thrilled last night when he saw cornbread in the skillet! By the way, I grew up putting butter and pancake syrup on my cornbread! Boy did THAT cause a stir at my in-laws the first time...

When I was growing up you were sent to the woodshed for syrup on cornbread.

Luke

I understand...I got a very strange look. (Unfortunately that wasn't the only time they froze in place and were speechless because of something I did.)

I, too, am a transplant to the South (I grew up in WA State). When I first moved to the South at the tender age of 19, my family and friends had a grand ol' time introducing me to Southern cooking! They fixed me okra, black eyed peas, collard greens, hush puppies...oh, loads of stuff I had never heard of before. Then they took me to a "pig pickin'!" <~~~ That was them watching me examine the pig on the grill. I discovered that they cook ALL the pig parts, tongue, viscera, reproductive parts...EVERYTHING!!! When I came across that last one, that's when they really started rolling. I never could bring myself to ask if anyone actually ate that.

Back to the topic, cornbread where I grew up was always yellow, and we always buttered it heavily. It was usually made in a 9"x9" cake pan and served with fish and green beans, or we made it in a muffin tin and ate it with eggs and bacon for breakfast.