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This easy homemade cornbread recipe is so simple and quick to fix, you’ll ditch the boxed mixes forever! When it comes to cornbread, there are two styles: Northern and Southern.
Northern cornbread is typically baked in a baking/cake pan, while Southern is traditionally made in a cast iron skillet. The other key differences lie in their sweetness and texture; Northern is sweeter and a little more cake-like, while Southern usually doesn’t have any added sugar is a little drier and more crumbly.
As New Englanders, our pick is Northern cornbread, but in keeping with our preference for only lightly sweetened baked goods, our version is perfectly suitable to use as a savory side dish. Serve it with a little butter at breakfast, use it in a Southern-style cornbread stuffing, or pair it with a bowl of chili for a deliciously hearty dinner.
Be sure to check the recipe notes for mix-in options like roasted jalapenos, corn kernels, shredded cheese, bacon, and sautéed onion.
Key Ingredients
Here’s what you need to know about the key ingredients in this recipe. The complete list, including quantities, is in the printable recipe card below.
CORNMEAL: In the course of testing this recipe, we tried both fine and medium/stone-ground yellow cornmeal. The fine cornmeal yields a smaller crumb, while the medium-ground cornmeal results in a slightly bigger crumb with a more pronounced corn flavor. It’s worth trying each to determine what your personal preference is.
ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR: As written, this recipe calls for a 1:1 ratio of cornmeal to AP flour, but that can be adjusted to produce the texture you like the best. A little more flour and less cornmeal will produce a more cake-like consistency. More cornmeal and less flour will give you that crumbly cornbread texture and a more pronounced corn flavor.
Overview
How to Make Cornbread from Scratch
Planning to make this recipe? Here’s a quick overview of how it’s done. Detailed, step-by-step instructions are in the printable recipe card below.
PRE-HEAT THE OVEN: Pre-heat the oven to 375°F and generously grease an 8-inch square cake pan.
COMBINE THE DRY INGREDIENTS: In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt.
COMBINE THE WET INGREDIENTS: In a separate bowl, whisk the milk, oil and eggs until well blended.
MIX THE BATTER: Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix just until combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
BAKE AND COOL: Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until light golden brown on the edges and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool for about 10 minutes in the pan on a wire rack before turning it out on the rack to finish cooling.
Tips for Success
In the course of our testing, we tried two different types of cake pans. The first was a thin, lightweight non-stick cake pan, and we found that the edges cooked too quickly compared with the rest of the batter, leading to significant doming at the center of the cornbread.
We tried the same pan a second time with cake strips (fabric strips soaked in water and wrapped around the cake pan to allow for more even baking), and they did help the cornbread to bake more evenly, though it still domed quite a bit.
The second type of cake pan was a heavy-duty, non-stick pan with a corrugated surface that provides more air circulation around the edges. This yielded a beautiful golden brown edge and a more level surface for the cornbread.
Easy Homemade Cornbread
Ingredients
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup yellow cornmeal
- 1/2 cup sugar, see notes
- 2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup milk
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 2 large eggs
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 375°F. Grease an 8-inch square cake pan.
- Combine the flour, corn meal, sugar, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk the milk, oil and egg together until well blended.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mix just until the dry ingredients are moistened and pour the batter into the prepared pan.
- Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until light golden brown and a toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack.
Notes
- Oven-roasted jalapeno peppers, 1 or 2, peeled and diced
- Corn kernels, up to 1/2 cup, frozen or fresh
- Monterey jack or cheddar cheese, up to 1/2 cup, grated
- Cooked, crumbled bacon or diced ham, up to 1/2 cup
- Sautéed chopped onion, up to 1/2 cup
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Can I use butter instead of oil?
Hi Francis,
You can use melted butter instead of oil for this recipe. Just allow it to cool a bit first. Hope this helps.
This is the best cornbread ever. I make it at least twice a week. My son never at cornbread because it was so dry. He eats this every day now
Thank you, Suzie! We love it too.
I love this recipe. However I can’t always find plain yellow cornmeal. Can I use self raising cornmeal instead ?
Hi Crystal,
I haven’t used self-rising cornmeal myself, but I do know that it already contains baking powder and salt. If I were to try using it in this recipe, I would cut the listed quantities of those two ingredients in half as you still need to include some of each because of the flour. I hope this helps.
Easy recipe to follow, but it’s so runny and I’m use to a thicker batter so this recipe has me concerned that it won’t set up while baking? So I am doing a test run before dinner tonight because I want to make sure it cooks up and is what I am wanting to use in my chili cornbread bake. Guess, we will see how it goes after it cooks and cools some, so it can be tasted.
Hi Sabrina,
If the recipe you usually use has shortening instead of the oil this recipe uses, the batter would naturally be thicker. I’m sure this will bake up just fine for you.
Came out great!. Not perfect but good enough for first time. When I make it again, I’ll tweak it.
A little less baking powder, and try to figure out how to make it a little more moist and less dry and crumbly.
Hi Ebony,
Glad you liked the recipe over all. You can try going with more flour (1-1/4 cups), less corn meal (3/4 cup) to get a more cake-like, less crumbly consistency.
This recipe is very easy to do. It is quick to put together and bakes up light.! I like the equal parts flour and corn meal. It bakes up just to my taste.
Hi Jennie,
We love to bake corn bread. It’s so easy and makes a versatile side to serve with dishes like chili or stew.
Really light and fluffy corn bread, I really love this recipe, but what if I want to make rustic corn bread. do you have a recipe somewhere? Thanks so much for sharing this great recipe.