Cornbread is a highly underrated side dish. You can whip up this deliciously sweet and moist homemade cornbread recipe with just a few pantry staples, and it makes a perfect side dish for breakfast, lunch, or dinner! Serve it slathered with butter at breakfast, crumbled into your soup or chili at lunch, or as a side with your collard greens and pork chops for dinner. It’s inexpensive, comforting, and seriously easy to make! So toss that boxed mix and let me show you how it’s done for real. ;)
What to Serve with Cornbread
Cornbread is a great side dish to go with any thick and hearty soup, stew, or chili. The cornbread can be dipped or crumbled into the saucy stews, where it absorbs all the flavor. I love it with Slow Cooker Vegetarian Lentil Chili, Weeknight Black Bean Chili, Glazed Pork Chops, Mexican Red Lentil Stew. This cornbread recipe also goes great with eggs for breakfast!
Cornbread Add-Ins
To make your cornbread a little more fun, consider stirring in some add-ins, like cheddar cheese, roasted corn kernels, diced green chiles, chili powder, or jalapeños, blueberries, or even some cooked sausage!
What Kind of Baking Dish to Use
While this glass pie dish is my favorite dish to bake my cornbread in, you can use just about any baking dish. This amount of batter would fit well in an 8×8 casserole dish, or a 10-inch cast iron skillet (although you should preheat the skillet as the oven preheats). Glass, ceramic, and cast iron work best, but you can also use metal baking dishes.
Make Corn Muffins Instead
Yes, you can pour this batter into an oiled muffin tin, filling each well about 3/4 full. Bake at the same temperature for 16-18 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown. This recipe will make about 10 corn muffins (see step by step photos below).
Easy Homemade Cornbread Recipe
Servings 8Ingredients
- 1 cup yellow cornmeal ($0.24)
- 1 cup all-purpose flour ($0.15)
- 1/4 cup sugar ($0.20)
- 1 Tbsp baking powder ($0.24)
- 1/2 tsp salt ($0.02)
- 1 cup milk ($0.31)
- 1 large egg ($0.27)
- 1/4 cup cooking oil ($0.08)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425ºF and coat the inside of a 9-inch pie plate, cast iron skillet, or 8×8 casserole dish with non-stick spray (or butter for more flavor).
- In a large bowl, stir together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt until evenly combined.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, egg, and oil.
- Pour the bowl of wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir just until everything is moist. Avoid over stirring. It’s okay if there are a few lumps.
- Pour the batter into the prepared dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the top and edges are golden brown. Cut into 8 pieces and serve.
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Equipment
Nutrition
Video
Scroll down for the step by step photos!
How to Make Cornbread from Scratch – Step by Step Photos
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and coat the inside of a 9-inch pie plate or 8×8 inch casserole dish with non-stick spray. In a large bowl, stir together 1 cup yellow cornmeal, 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 Tbsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. Make sure these are really well stirred together.
In a separate bowl, whisk together 1 cup milk, 1 large egg, and 1/4 cup cooking oil.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients…
And stir just until everything is moistened. You don’t want to over stir the batter because that can develop the gluten in the flour and make the end product a little rubbery, so it’s okay if there are a few lumps. No need to stir until everything is completely smooth.
Spread the batter into your prepared dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the top and edges are golden brown. The exact baking time may vary slightly based on your dish and your oven.
The top will crack a little and look all delicious.
Or you can pour the batter into an oiled muffin tin, filling each well about 3/4 full. You’ll get about 10 corn muffins.
Bake the muffins at the same temperature, for 16-18 minutes, or until they’re golden brown on top.
This recipe turned out great; even my picky daughter approved! This will be our go to cornbread recipe now. TY :)
Love the recipe, just what I needed- basic. I’d like to sub in honey for the sugar, how much do you think I should add?
We haven’t tried it with just honey so it’s hard to say! I do think you’d need at least the same amount so it’s sweet enough.
I have a hard time looking for low-sweet cornbread, so I’m thankful for this recipe! I’ve made it several times and it comes out great! It’s a crumbly a bit on the drier side, but that’s what I like! I’m not a big fan of sweet, cake-y cornbread with my chili so I will continue using this recipe from now on! Thanks Budget Bytes!
I have made this multiple times, and it always turns out perfectly. So easy, too.
Love.
Great Cornbread Recperd
This came out perfect!! I used a cast iron skillet and used melted butter for the pan and the recipe. It was so fluffy and rich. It even reheated perfect the next day to eat with my leftover stew. I have saved this recipe to make it again! May add some jalapeño or creamed corn to the next batch to really boost the flavors. I did enjoy the plain flavor of this as I was able to have it for breakfast with a little butter and jam. It is a very versatile quick bread and the ratios of the recipe are perfect!
Very little taste to it and i followed the recipe exactly.
Excellent! Added 1 teaspoon of essence of butter. Family loved it!
Excellent. Made as written except I used Trader Joe’s gluten free flour.
good base recipe if you know how to adjust to your liking. 2 stars because i had to double the amount of milk i used– i triple checked, and yes, it really is only one cup. even with oil and egg, one cup is nowhere near enough for a good moisture content, it should look like brownie batter. besides that, the recipe is fine (add paprika, garlic salt, cayenne, and tajin to your liking to make it taste heavenly.)
That’s really strange that yours was so dry. With the amounts given in the recipe my batter is so moist that it is pourable (as you can see in the video in the bottom of the recipe card or the step by step photos below).
Great, simple recipe. We had everything on hand. Changes: about half the sugar, only 3 tsp of baking powder, and butter instead of oil. Did them in little silicone muffin cups for 16.5 minutes. Delicious. Not too dry, not overly moist, not sweet–just right to go with some chili.
Cheers from NC!
This tasted horrible! I used four tsp of baking powder as the recipe indicated and it was too much. All I could taste was the baking powder
I’m not sure why, but I’ve tried this recipe two times now and the batter is always super dry and not like the pictures. I really wanted it to work, but it just doesn’t. I wonder if it’s the amount of baking powder??
No, the baking powder is not likely to affect the moisture level in the batter. Here are a few possibilities: What size egg are you using? How are you measuring your flour and cornmeal (make sure they’re not mounded in the measuring cup)? Are your measuring cups accurate? A lot of “novelty” measuring cups (the kind that are shaped like other objects or are meant to be pretty) are just not very accurate.
Tried it last night with my family as a side with chili. It was great! Next time I’d like to try it with a replacement for the oil to cut on the calories. Thanks for sharing!
I really shouldn’t rate this because I changed some things, but I wanted to comment. I gave it 5 stars because I didn’t want to mess up your rating.
I used Swerve instead of sugar and used a half cup instead of 1/4 because monk fruit is only 70% as sweet as sugar and I like it sweet. I also left out the oil; both changes to reduce calories. The consistency was good and it wasn’t dry. However, it had absolutely no sweet to it. So next time I will probably use a cup!