Awesome Cornbread

At our wedding, we had some amazing cornbread muffins. Since then, Jess and I have been craving cornbread of the same caliber - soft, moist, sweet, and not gritty.

Today I may have stumbled upon the solution. Last week we tried the recipe off the back of the cornmeal bag. Blech. Gritty. Dry. NOT what we wanted. We looked at Alton Brown's recipe (in his I'm just here for more food book), picked up a few hints, and then modified his even further. The result was outstanding. It was very cakey- not very gritty.... and nice and sweet (though to get to the level of sweetness of the muffins at my wedding, we'd need even more sugar!)

Ingredients:
3/4 c buttermilk
3/4 c cornmeal
1/2 c cakeflour (you could also use all-purpose flour, just use about a tablespoon less).
2 Tblspn butter, melted
pinch salt
1/3 c sugar (1/2 cup if you want it to be sweeter- more like a dessert muffin)
1/4 c vegetable oil
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 egg, beaten

Add 3/4 cup buttermilk and 3/4 cup fine cornmeal to a mixing bowl. (If you need to, blend or food process your cornmeal to get it finer - this will help keep it from being gritty).

Let your buttermilk/cornmeal mixture reast for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425.

To the soggy cornmeal mixture, add the beaten egg, the oil, and the butter. Whisk it all together.

Add the sugar, then the dry ingredients.

Once everything is mixed well, PAM a 7" round cake pan... or double this recipe and use a 9" round, or use a bunch of muffin tins... who cares. The 7" round should be checked at 15 minutes, and will probably need another 3-5 minutes. We settled at 20 minutes for a beautiful golden brown. It yielded what would have been about 8 muffins, and they were DELICIOUS!!!! I'd have taken a picture, but... there aren't any left!