Cornbread with Bacon

This week is a mission to use up my excess storecupboard contents - both because I'm post-Christmas broke and not very in the mood for the supermarket after work! Cornbread is a favourite of mine - a throwback to the amazing Southern pastor we had at my church when I was a teenager and her almost insanely good cooking! I had made some a while back and still had tonnes of cornmeal in the cupboard. Helpfully, when I rooted out the packet, it had a recipe on the back for precisely what I intended to try!

You'll notice that my recipes are in cups - I long ago switched to cooking solely with cup measures as I like to enjoy my cooking and baking and there's nothing I hate more than fiddling around with scales. If you know anyone in the States, I recommend you have them send you some - a cheap set costs about $3 and you won't know yourself!

If you want to convert to grams, be careful how you go about it - as cup measurements vary according to the ingredients you're using. You can use this table to convert the most common ingredients and use your intuition for things not listed... cornmeal = tapioca et al. If you have an iPhone (yes - I'm about to tell you there's an app for that. I'm SO sorry - but there is!) you can use Kitchen Calculator Pro, which I love! It's a paid one, but worth it.

Enough rambling - you're here for the food!

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups cornmeal (NOT cornflour - big difference)

1 cup plain flour

1 tsp baking bowder

1 tsp baking soda

2 eggs

1/2 cup butter

1 cup milk

3/4 cup diced bacon (I usually buy this pre-packaged)

Method:

1. Heat a frying pan and fry the bacon pieces on a high heat until cooked but only slightly crispy. Don't add oil to the pan - the bacon fat will melt and be quite sufficient.

2. While the bacon is frying, put the cornmeal in a bowl and sieve in the flour, baking powder and baking soda.

3. Once the bacon is done, turn off the heat and transfer it to a bowl, leaving the melted fat in the pan on the hob.

4. Beat the eggs.

5. Put the butter in the frying pan - it should melt easily as the pan will still be warm. If not - microwave it for a couple of seconds. Add the milk and stir, scraping the bottom of the pan so that the mixture absorbs the bacon fat - as the bacon and the remaining fat are so salty, I don't add salt to this recipe.

6. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add the eggs and the milk mixture. Mix together gently. Fold in the cooked bacon.

7. My favourite new Nigella tip - brush a cake tin with olive oil instead of greasing with butter. N.B Use only a little oil here, to ensure that the bread becomes crunchy on the outside. Use oil liberally if you are making a cake that you want to remain moist and also line the bottom of the tin with a circle of greaseproof paper. Pour the mixture into the tin and spread it out evenly.

8. Bake at 200°C until risen and golden brown on top - I know it's unhelpful not to give timings here, but this depends so much on your oven. This took 18 minutes in my fan oven in a 12 inch round cake tin.

9. Turn out on to a wire rack - this is where the springform cake tin is your friend!

This makes for the ideal lazy dinner or cheeky late night snack as the plain, creamy richness of the cornbread is brought out by the sharp tang of the bacon and it is very filling. This is gorgeous either straight out of the oven, or when allowed to cool and then eaten with butter spread on top.

To make regular cornbread, substitute 1/2 cup of sugar for the bacon and make sure you have something tasty and lots of butter to go with it!