Rockin' Cornbread

My mom used to have this marvelous little 6" cast iron cornbread skillet.  I can't possibly begin to estimate how many lovely, lightly browned little lumps of love we ate out of that skillet.  Summer and winter, so many suppers were completed with cornbread.

Mom taught my niece how to make cornbread and eventually gave Ali that pan when Mom thought her cornbread making days were through.  I inherited my Grandma Trotter's iron cornbread skillet, but Grandma's family was larger and cornbread was for more than supper, so my pan measures closer to 8".  Thereby my problem.  I never seemed to get the hang of making that larger batch of cornbread.  And now that my family at home is down to Edward and me (and the dog), we always ended up throwing away leftover cornbread.  That's a Southern sin, ya'll!

But my mom began to miss her little cornbread pan and mentioned it to some group or other (probably her Sunday School class).  Presto!  Two people gave her used (thank goodness!) 6" cast iron cornbread skillets.  So guess what?  Tonight I made a BEAUTIFUL batch of outside-crunchy, inside-just-right cornbread!  Yeah!

I know Celestine Sibley's mother wouldn't approve of my efforts (because I used self-rising cornmeal), but I'm sharing the recipe I mostly used.  Mom gave it to me with the little pan.  It's not the recipe she used all those years; Celestine's mother would have approved my mom's old plain cornmeal efforts.  This one came from a local North Georgia educator, the principal of the first school where I taught in fact.  As I say, I thought this recipe rocked.

Charles Henry Arp's Cornbread for 4


1 cup self-rising cornmeal (I used white )
1 Tablespoon self-rising flour (I didn't have any self-rising flour so I used Kentucky Kernel Seasoned Flour)
1/4 cup cooking oil
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 egg


Beat whole egg in mixing bowl.  Add other ingredients (I heated the oil in the skillet in the oven first) and mix well.  Place mixture in a warm 6" iron skillet.  Bake at 450 degrees Fahrenheit in a preheated oven for approximately 20 minutes.

Yummy.  Oh, and the yellow-eyed soup peas (from dried peas), salmon patties and chow-chow were pretty good too.

Addendum 12/9/2012: I use ONLY real buttermilk.  Don't even try to pawn any of that "reduced fat" stuff off on me!  The real thing is getting harder to find, but thank goodness some stores around still carry Marburger Farm Dairy Gourmet Buttermilk and better yet, Mayfield Whole Cultured Buttermilk.  Anyone who identifies another brand of whole buttermilk, please let me know!