Of course, I'll submit this to the carnival, but the real purpose of posting it is so that I will have it handy next week while visiting my daughters. At my age, one doesn't want to trust memory completely...
The original recipe is from one of my MIL's handwritten recipe journals. She died before my husband and I met, and I didn't know about these gems until my FIL's death. My husband's favorite of all of them is Elvie's Shrimp Gumbo.
The first thing I did (after reading all the recipes and marveling at the beautiful penmanship) was transcribe them. I wish I'd had a scanner then. Then I gave the books to her oldest grandchild. First is the recipe as she wrote it, then the version I've come up with that's closer to the cornbread my mother made, for which no recipe was ever recorded.
Elvie's Bacon Flavored Corn Sticks6 tablespoons warm bacon drippings
1/2 cup boiling water
1 cup yellow meal
2 eggs, well-beaten
1 cup milk
1 cup sifted flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugarGrease pan with drippings. Pour boiling water over cornmeal in medium bowl. Add remaining drippings and stir until thick. Beat in eggs, then milk. Add sifted flour, baking powder, salt, sugar. Stir until well-blended. Put in heated pan. Bake.
Cornbread that's almost like my Mama's
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup white cornmeal
1 cup flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups milkPreheat oven to 400 degrees. Put shortening in a cast iron skillet and place it in oven to melt. (Voice of experience says don't forget it's there.)
Combine all dry ingredients. Add milk and eggs. Stir until blended. Retrieve melted shortening from oven, and remove approximately 6 tablespoons (3/8 cup). Add this to the batter, stirring until blended.
Sprinkle approximately 1 tablespoon cornmeal in the pan, mingling it well with the remaining melted shortening.
Pour batter into pan and bake for approximately 15 minutes. Maybe 20. Someday, I'll remember to actually time this. Maybe I should just say bake until done.
If there's a difference in the taste of yellow and white cornmeal, it's too subtle for me to discern. There is definitely a difference in perception and my mother always used white cornmeal and never used sugar. She said yellow cornbread with sugar was too much like cake.
She also used buttermilk, and I'm pretty sure she used only one egg. I don't think she used as much shortening as I'm currently calling for, but it's close. It's hard to tell because she just dipped a spoon into the shortening can and dumped it in the skillet. She measured the meal and flour by 'eye' or by 'feel' also.
Other than this recipe, the closest to my mother's cornbread is Martha White's Buttermilk Cornbread Mix. The recipes above are equivalent to two packages. The yellow cornbread mix is pretty close in taste to my MIL's recipe, which isn't overly sweet.
(I don't recommend these Martha White mixes. They don't call for an egg, and don't turn out nearly as well as the others.)
