This cornbread recipe is easily the best we’ve ever made. And we’ve made lots of them over the years! We’re no strangers to cornbread mix—sometimes when you’re hungry for cornbread, you just need the shortest distance between two points and that’s using a mix. But you know that homemade cornbread is always, always going to be just a little better. Fresh, sweet cornbread, all warm from the oven with salty butter and honey on the side is a pleasure that can so easily be yours! Plus, cornbread goes with so many things! Our Award Winning Chili or Black Bean Soup are classic cornbread partners, but it’s one of our favorite BBQ side dish ideas, too. Check out cornbread’s cousin, Spoon Bread, for another great bake, or for a super retro side, try Scalloped Corn Casserole.
Homemade Cornbread Ingredients
Cornmeal: You really need to find fine cornmeal for this easy cornbread. Do not use grits or polenta — they’re coarser and they won’t yield the sweet, tender cornbread that you want.
Sour cream: A lot of recipes call for buttermilk, but our cornbread recipe stays moist and tender thanks to the magical baking powers of sour cream! Because sour cream is fattier than milk or buttermilk (which are perhaps more traditional cornbread ingredients) it adds a lot of richness without thinning the batter at all.
Flour: Regular all-purpose flour is ideal here.
Baking powder and baking soda: For lots of lift! Fluffy, tender cornbread, here we come.
Sugar: Not too much — just enough to highly the sweet corn flavor.
Salt: Cornbread walks a delicious line between sweet and savory, and a hint of salt is a must.
Butter: You’ll want to have extra butter on hand to spread on your warm-from-the-oven cornbread, too.
Milk: Use whole milk here for the most tender results.
Honey: It adds just a little extra something to this cornbread recipe, and we adore it drizzled on top of the finished bread, too.
Eggs: You can’t really bake with out them. If you can’t eat eggs, you could try an egg replacer, but it might not turn out quite as fluffy and tender as it would with real egg.
How To Make Cornbread
Butter and flour a baking pan. This is super important! You want your slices of homemade cornbread to slide right out of the pan, so take a minute to really get that butter, then flour into every corner. If you’re new to prepping a pan like this, here’s a handy how-to video.
Mix the dry ingredients! The cornmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Mix the wet ingredients! Melted butter, sugar, honey, egg, milk and sour cream.
Mix it all together. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. This is your one moment of focus. Remember: DO NOT overmix the cornbread batter. Once you see a relatively cohesive batter, STOP stirring.
Spread the cornbread batter in the pan and bake!
It’ll be done after roughly 20 minutes, and you’ll have to let it cool a bit before you eat it. (The hardest part of all!)
What to Serve With This Cornbread Recipe
Cornbread goes with so, so many things! And we’re happy to just have it around as a snack! Can you even imagine a better after-school snack than warm cornbread with butter and honey?! But we also think cornbread goes really well with:
Chili! Like our Vegetarian Chili, Award Winning Chili, or Turkey Pumpkin Chili.
Barbecue! Like this sticky, saucy Baked BBQ Chicken Thighs, or this classic Spatchcocked Grilled Chicken.
Soups & stews! There is probably no soup that we wouldn’t enjoy having some cornbread with, but Taco Soup and Salmon Chowder seem like extra perfect partners for fresh, homemade cornbread.
How To Store Cornbread
Homemade cornbread goes fast in our homes, but if you do have leftovers, they’ll keep beautifully in an airtight container on the counter for a few days, and you can even freeze your cornbread if you want to. Just be sure to wrap it tightly — we’d do a layer or two of plastic wrap, followed by at least a layer of foil — and freeze it for up to 3 months.
More Cozy Soups To Pair With Your Cornbread
There’s Nothing Corny About How Much We Love This Homemade Cornbread Recipe!
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