Sweet cornbread

Nothing beats a slice of warm cornbread topped with a slab of melting butter.

Cornbread always brings to mind Marie Callendar's, the restaurant chain known for its pies. I know it for both pies and cornbread. They always served the square of cornbread warm with butter melting on top and it seemed more like a cake than a quick bread. Which meant I liked it, of course.

I haven't gone to Marie Callendar's very much since my undergrad days, way, way back in the day. But I still like me some good cornbread. I don't like it enough to keep trying out different recipes for it though, mostly because the ones I've tried in the past have invariably been dense and sometimes dry with a gritty, crumbly texture. There's only so much dry cornbread warm, melting butter can save.

Fortunately, this wasn't like that at all. I made it with white cornmeal so it might not shriek (yellow) cornbread in the pictures and could try to pass itself off as vanilla cake. But nope, it's cornbread and pretty good cornbread at that. It lives up to its name as being "sweet cornbread" but that made it tasty to my sweet tooth. I also liked the texture which leaned more towards cakey rather than crumbly but still retained the slight grittiness of cornbread.

As always, you can't go wrong with serving it warm with melted butter on top. Even at room temperature it's still pretty good but go for the warm; it's worth it.

Sweet cornbread
From High Heels and Grills

4 eggs, separated
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup cornmeal
2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9- x 13-inch pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.

2. In a medium-size bowl, combine egg yolks, milk, vanilla and melted butter; whisk to combine.

3. Add the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir until fully combined but do not over mix.

4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold them into the batter.

5. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

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