Recipe of the Moment: Cornbread

In honor of October Unprocessed, the first recipe I'm posting is for cornbread. I've never actually made this from scratch before, and I was surprised at how easy it turned out. I used Mark Bittman's recipe, and I love all the ideas he gave, such as adding bacon or shallots or herbs or jalapenos. They all sounded yummy, and perhaps I'll make that in the future, but for right now I just wanted to plain old cornbread.

Just a quick note: everyone in the comments seemed to be appalled that there is sugar in this recipe. "Real" cornbread does not have sugar in it. Of course, the only person who gave an alternate recipe had the base as Jiffy cornbread mix, so I discounter his/her opinion. So is the sugar necessary? I'm not sure. Probably not. But I added some anyway. Do whatever makes you feel right.

Ingredients

1 tbsp of butter, oil, or lard

1.5 cups of corn meal

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1.5 tsps baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1.25 cups milk, more if necessary

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 375. Put the butter/oil/lard in cast iron or baking tray and place the empty pan in the oven.

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix the eggs into the milk, then stir the milk mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Add more milk if mixture seems dry.

When the oven/pan is hot, carefully remove it from the oven. Add mixture to pan.

Bake for 30 minutes or until the top is lightly browned.

Enjoy!