1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup corn kernels (frozen, fresh or canned but drained)
2 eggs
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup corn meal
1/2 cup hush puppy mix (such as House Autry)
1/2 tablespoon baking soda
Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Lightly grease an 8 inch skillet or muffin tin.
2) In a large bowl, beat together sugar, salt, butter, maple syrup and milk until creamy. Stir in corn kernels. Stir in eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
3) In a separate bowl, mix together remaining dry ingredients.
4) Stir flour mixture into milk mixture. Beat until incorporated.
5) Bake in preheated oven for 30-40 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve warm with honey and butter...yum!!
Parley
Perhaps more than any other recipe I’ve posted on this blog thus far, Hush Puppy Cornbread epitomizes my cooking style as well as my cooking "roots". For me cooking began simply as an experiment with “leftovers” and the random flotsam and jetsam that inhabited my mother’s kitchen. I slowly learned what flavors and textures worked together and what did not and over the years I developed a deep enjoyment for the creative aspects of cooking, broadened my culinary horizons, learned a thing or two about the finer aspects of the art but have always hung on to that rag-tag cooking tradition of using bits and pieces found in my kitchen at that moment.
The above preamble brings us to this evening’s edition of two well known, humble staples of southern cooking, cornbread and hush puppies. Let’s see, the idea came about because I had an almost full can of opened sweetened condensed milk I had no idea what to do with (I had used a couple tablespoonfuls to make piña coladas the previous night). As there was still had half of a rich and decadent lemon cake from my parents anniversary dinner sitting on the counter I didn’t want to make a dessert, the usual thing I suppose with the ingredient in question…what to do, what to do. I began searching for recipes using sweetened condensed milk online and ran across one where cornbread and sweetened condensed milk were both used in the little Google description of the website. I very quickly scanned the recipe and decided it was a go for cornbread…that is until I discovered we were running low on cornmeal and flour while at the same time remembering that our baking powder had gone a bit off considering the cake from the day before had not risen properly (still very tasty, just a bit flat). In typical Jenn fashion I decided to make do with what I had on hand! After a bit of rummaging through the cupboards and fridge I lined my assortment of make-shift ingredients up on the counter – some cornmeal, some flour, some hush puppy mix, baking soda, a can of corn and of course the little thing that started it all, a slightly used can of sweetened condensed milk. I can’t help but channel a little bit of Friends here aka Joey…cornbread…good! Hush puppies…good! Sweetened condensed milk…good! Mix them all together…good! And that’s exactly what I did, substituting baking soda for baking powder, hush puppy mix for the missing parts of both corn meal and flour, substituting maple syrup for vanilla and adding corn just because I wanted to I proceeded with my grand experiment. I mixed, stirred, poured and baked my motley muffins! When I ascertained that they had reached the correct level of golden perfection I pulled them out, snatched one up, added a little butter and honey to the top and took a bite…and was in hush puppy cornbread heaven! Despite there being a million cornbread recipes out there and despite the unlikelihood of anyone going to the trouble of gathering the necessary ingredients to make this particular recipe I decided I’d blog it anyway. I went back to the original recipe called “Amusement Park Cornbread” on allrecipies.com to figure out some measurements and had a good laugh when I realized that it did not, in fact, call for sweetened condensed milk at all, but rather plain old ordinary milk! All’s well that ends well though so I think I’ll go have another Hushpuppycornbreadsweetenedcondensedmilkmistake….
