The Key To Sweet And Savory Cornbread Is Already In Your Pantry

Soft and fluffy, warm and buttery, every morsel melding into your taste buds with each indulgent bite. Cornbread is one of the delights of the eating experience. Good for dinner, lunch, morning breakfast, or even at snack time, cornbread is as versatile (Tina Turner made cornbread with bacon) as it is mouthwatering.

One clever way to ramp up the flavor in your cornbread even more is by adding some maple syrup to the batter. It's an everyday ingredient in the kitchen cabinet, but you can use it to imbue a tinge of sweetness to the rich and buttery oven-baked crumbles. Sweet maple cornbread is an experimental twist that traces its origins north of the Mason-Dixon line and takes old-fashioned cornbread to another level. It's good even at room temperature. However, fresh out of the oven piping hot, it's yummy enough to make you slap your mama in the middle of Sunday school. But don't let the deliciousness compel you to get sent to cornbread Jesus. Keep this recipe confined to your own kitchen until you've perfected the technique and learned how to manage those intrusive thoughts. 

Once you do, you'll be in store for a one-of-a-kind treat with a moist texture and a subtle sweet taste that doesn't overwhelm your cornbread's natural richness. Your next Thanksgiving dinner might be the perfect occasion to trot the recipe out for your family.

Cornbread is the perfect side item to compliment a hot bowl of chili (so much so that we made a chili-cornbread skillet pie), a soulful dinner, or a simmering meat stew on a nippy fall night. It's a quick and easy adjustment to transform your traditional blend into maple cornbread. Whisk a quarter cup of maple syrup into your mixture of milk, eggs, and butter before you add it to the flour, cornmeal, and baking powder. After you've cooked it in the oven for about 20 minutes, brush a little syrup and butter on top of the hot leaven if you're in the mood for some extra savoriness. 

It produces a sweet, cake-like version that intertwines with the salty, buttermilk flavors signature to cornbread. Before you take a bite into your leftovers, butter the top layer and put it on a low broil for a few minutes to toast the slices for a crispy and buttered up twist on the second go-round. It's a combination as tasty as drizzling honey on a platter of buttermilk Popeyes biscuits fresh out of the oven.

An added bonus is that maple syrup is a much healthier alternative to refined sugars and artificial sweeteners. It has a higher dose of antioxidants, a lower glycemic index, and evidence suggests it can even help stave off inflammatory diseases — including cancer.