Cornbread

For the last two summers I’ve gone on a road trip with my parents to Ocracoke, in the Outer Banks in North Carolina.  It’s a beaaaaautiful island with an amazing beach, perfect seafood, and insanely good cornbread.

I love southern cooking, and good cornbread is out of this world.  This time, I knew I had to  try making it myself, especially because I recently inherited my great Grandma’s cast iron pan that’s probably almost as old as my parents.  It worked beautifully to bake in.

This cornbread is delicious warm out of the oven smeared with butter whipped with a bit of honey, but I found it even more delicious and moist the following day.  I stored it at room temperature in the pan covered in tin foil.

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups cornmeal
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/3 cup whipping cream
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 2 eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 8 tbsp melted butter

Steps

Preheat oven to 425F and place cast iron skillet in oven to heat up.

Whisk together cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a large bowl.  Add cream, buttermilk, eggs and yolk and whisk together.  Whisk in butter, leaving about 1 tbsp for the skillet.

Remove skillet from oven and brush with melted butter, then pour batter into hot skillet.

Reduce oven temperature to 375F and bake for 20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean.