Corn Bread

Remember the school cafeteria corn bread of your youth? I remember it mainly as something to fill a kid's stomach, nothing fancy, just kidfodder. Which is why I was so surprised by what is being offered in restaurants these days. It's sweet, has a finer texture, nothing at all like the institutional bricks of my youth. (in fact, my first encounter gave me a scare - I found myself at the table, chewing this sweet new-style bread and for a moment thought, "dear God, I've had a stroke, I'm sitting here eating dessert and I don't even remember having dinner.")

Anyway, I found out the the secret to this fancy corn-bread-nouveau: You just substitute cake mix for the flour in a regular corn bread recipe. I tried it last night and was pretty happy with the result. I tried a half cake mix/half corn meal ratio and the taste was great, though more grainy than the usual restaurant iteration. Which is good: the graininess reminded me of the Texas school system bricks of my youth, which, if you let them dry out for a few days, could be used like sandpaper blocks, and would smooth out Bondo better than any abrasive offered by 3M.

So if you ever feel adventuresome, and like me, suspect that we don't already have too much sugar in our diets, give it a try.