My mother's cornbread, while I was growing up, was like so many other Southerners' bread back then, a round cake baked in a preheated iron skillet, just as her mother's and grandmother's and probably her great- and great-great-grandmother's had been before her. Cut into wedges and passed around while it was almost blistering hot, we eagerly risked a burn to split our steaming wedge and stuff it with as much butter as we could get away with.
It was the quintessential accompaniment for Mama's pots of greens, beans, field peas, and vegetable soup.
And yet, oddly enough, when I'm missing her and craving her cornbread, it's not a round skillet cake that I make, but muffins.
As one by one my brothers and I grew up and left home, big wheels of skillet bread were practical only when there was company, or on the rare occasion when all three of us came home with our families. And on top of that, my father found out he was allergic to corn. To keep him happy, Mama created a plausible imitation cornbread by substituting dry cream of wheat for cornmeal, but it worked best baked in a muffin tin. So, for the last thirty or so years, that's how she baked both Dad's substitute and the real cornbread she made for herself and for whoever happened to be visiting.
The muffin tin was aluminum, not cast iron, so to give the bread a crisp, richly-browned crust, she greased the underside of the tin along with the wells and let it gradually develop a nice deep-brown coating on its underside.
Now that I'm cooking for just two most of the time, I rarely bake cakes of skillet cornbread either, but more often than not make cornsticks. When I'm really missing Mama and needing comfort, however, only corn muffins will do. The six-well tin I have is the one she gave me when I left home forty years ago, and until recently had rarely been used, so it's not seasoned and richly browned like hers. The bread it produces isn't quite up to her standard yet, but I'm greasing the underside regularly, so it's getting there, and every batch gets closer.
Mama's Corn Muffins
My mother had stopped using animal fat other than butter even before I was grown, and had long since embraced using olive oil in her bread as soon as good oil was widely available.
Makes 6
¾ cup fine stone-ground white cornmeal
¾ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 large egg
About 2/3 cup buttermilk
About 2 tablespoons good extra-virgin olive oil
Softened butter, for serving (optional)
1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat it to 450° F. Combine the cornmeal, baking powder, soda, and salt in a medium mixing bowl and whisk to evenly blend them. Break the egg into a separate bowl and lightly beat it until the yolk and white are well mixed, then beat in the buttermilk and 1 tablespoon of oil until smooth.
2. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the egg and milk. Quickly stir them together. The batter should be thick but pourable: if it seems a little dry, add another spoonful or so of milk.
3. Drizzle a little oil into each well of a 6-muffin tin and rub to coat the bottom and sides of each. Add the batter by spoonfuls, dividing it evenly among the wells. Bake in the center of the preheated oven for 14-16 minutes, or until the muffins are risen, browned and have just begun to separate from the sides of their wells. If any of the muffins are a little stuck, run a palette knife around the edge to loosen it. Turn them out into a towel-lined basket and serve immediately with softened butter passed separately.