Buttermilk Cornbread

When I think of cornbread I envision a table spread akin to the Soul food movie with fry chicken, yams, collard greens, and the like. I also think of it as a staple of  not only southern cooking but American cooking. I am not new to baking cornbread and I have been putting new spins on boxes of jiffy mixes since I was a little girl adding in cheese, sausage, or extra butter. As time went on I moved away from the Jiffy boxes and started making my own from scratch but the recipes I found never really did it for me. I wanted a dense, semi sweet, semi savory bread. I kept on searching and last week found a recipe on allrecipes.com , it was a buttermilk cornbread recipe with great reviews. The recipe made 9 servings but I wanted 12 so I used to automatic recipe converter. The only strange happenings was that the recipe called for 2 3/4 eggs!? I decided that 3 whole eggs would work and only add to the cake-iness of the cornbread.  I also reduced the converted amount of sugar from over 3/4 cups to only 1/2 because I didn't want it to be too sweet, and lastly I added in one tablespoon each of garlic and onion powder. I wanted to go extra southern and bake the cornbread in a cast iron skillet so I liberally greased it with butter and carried on mixing the batter. The recipe was a great success and even though I am not the biggest fan of cornbread I plan to keep the recipe for whenever I am in the mood for good ol' cornbread.

Grandmother's Buttermilk Cornbread

• 2/3 cup butter
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1-1/3 cups buttermilk
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1-1/3 cups cornmeal
• 1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 8 inch square pan.

Melt butter in large skillet. Remove from heat and stir in sugar. Quickly add eggs and beat until well blended. Combine buttermilk with baking soda and stir into mixture in pan. Stir in cornmeal, flour, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt until well blended and few lumps remain. Pour batter into the prepared pan.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.