Best-Ever Cornbread

This cornbread is delicious, moist, and GLUTEN FREE! I have several friends who are gluten intolerant or who have celiac disease, and I was in search of a gluten-free cornbread recipe that didn't require crazy bean and rice flours. This is the best recipe whether or not you can have wheat, so make it now!

Growing up, my mom would make cornbread fairly often. This is her idea of comfort food. Her recipe required a cast-iron skillet, but we all know I don't have one of those. Her recipe also called for a stick of butter to be melted in that skillet.  Once the butter was boiling and frothy, you pour the batter into the middle of it. Essentially, you fry the cornbread. It's more about the butter than the batter in this case, but everything is more about the butter with Mom.

I didn't really like cornbread (or corn for that matter) for a long time, but this recipe made me fall in love with it. Every time I have this recipe, I fall in love with it all over again. Spread some butter on these as soon as they come out of the oven; top with grape jam, strawberry preserves, or honey. Just take a moment--oh soooo good. No matter what form this batter takes--mini muffins, regular muffins, 8x8 pan that you cut into squares, it is guaranteed to be mouth watering!

I made mini muffins for the Super Bowl party. I doubled the recipe to serve 18 adults and the same number of children; it made about 70 mini muffins. Luckily, there were leftovers, so I'll be snacking on those the rest of this week! 

I made a double helping, hence the extra eggs and corn.

2 cups corn meal (I used both yellow and white, but yellow is just fine by itself)

1 t salt

2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1 cup buttermilk

2 eggs

3 T honey

1 cup canned creamed corn 

Preheat oven to 375. Spray the pan. Mix the dry ingredients together. 

Add the buttermilk and stir just a little bit. Add eggs one at a time. Then add honey and corn. 

Pour into pans and bake for 10 - 12 minutes for mini muffins, 15 minutes for regular muffins, and 20 minutes for a skillet or 8x8 pan. Once the tops no longer look glossy and when touched it feels somewhat firm--not too springy and not too firm--they're finished. If you overcook these, they'll be too dry. If you don't manage to eat them all in one sitting, they keep well in the refrigerator and can be reheated in the toaster oven.