Papaw’s Southern Cornbread Sticks
One of the things I remember my dad baking during the fall and winter seasons is cornbread. He had an old iron baking dish, that shaped the corn bread into small corn on the cob shapes. He liked his cornbread heavy and stiff, for soaking up sauces and juice from the main meat of the meal. Or his favorite red kidney beans. The mainstay in Beans on Toast in our house.
My Mom and Dad are from east Tennessee, in the mountains of the Smokeys. The north side of the South. My dad learned to cook from his Mom, who learned to cook from her mom and so on. The old family recipes are ages old and they were designed to sustain anyone during the hard work of the field and farm. I don’t know exactly where this recipe started, but my Dad told me, his grandmother used to make this nearly every Sunday for dinner after church.
Preparation Time: 1 hour
Makes 12 Sticks
Ingredients:
There are a ton of iron skillet forms you can find today. But my favorite is still the corn on the cob skillet.
Wet Ingredients:
- 1 ½ cups butter milk
- ½ cup milk
- 1 egg
- ¼ cup melted butter or margarine
- A small tab of butter for coating the cornbread forms
Dry Ingredients:
- 1 ¼ cups yellow cornmeal
- 1 cup Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- * If you want to add sugar for some sweetness, add ¼ cup of sugar.
Directions:
- Pre-heat oven to 400ºF.
- Melt a tab of butter and using a basting brush, grease the bread forms.
- Stir dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl and mix thoroughly with a fork.
- In a separate large mixing bowl, beat milk and egg with a fork until the mixture is bubbly. About 1 minute.
- Gently stir in melted butter. Make sure the butter isn’t bubbling hot.
- Add all the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. It’s important to do this all at once. Don’t add the dry ingredients one at a time to the wet ingredients.
- Pour batter into skillet forms. I like to use a ladle to spoon the mixture into the individual forms.
- Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
- Empty pan onto a clean dry cloth, or paper towel.
- Dab a small amount of butter on the tops of each muffin. Again, I like using a basting brush to coat the sticks evenly.
- Alternatives:
- You can use a round pan, 9×1½ inches, or a square pan, 8x8x2 inches if you don’t want sticks or muffins.
- You can exchange the butter milk for milk, but it really changes the southern country flavor.
- If you like your bread a little less moist, use ¼ cups of milk instead of the ½ cup. (This is not the butter milk).
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