Vegan cornbread

Cornbread recipe baked with dairy free ingredients and no eggs. Easy and budget friendly recipe, great as a side dish to a main meal or soup dishes.

If you are after more traditional cornbread made with buttermilk (but no sugar), you can try my sugar-free cornbread recipe.

Why make this recipe?

• Dairy free & egg free recipe
• Budget friendly
• Easy to bake bread or a side dish to have with your main meal

What exactly is cornbread?

Traditional cornbread is fairly sweet type of bread, often baked in a skillet using a mix of cornmeal and plain (all purpose) flour. It’s used a side dish and served with soups, main meals like chilli con carne. The ideas is that the sweet style of this bread takes away the heat of the spices from the food.

The traditional recipe is made with buttermilk, eggs and butter.

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Any specialist equipment needed?

Cornbread can be baked in pretty much any tray with higher sides, like a large brownie tin, skillet, cake tin. You can also use a muffin tin and divide this recipe into muffin sized bread

Ingredients

Cornmeal

Cornmeal is a coarsely ground corn to create rough type of flour. It can be used instead of regular flour to add a wholemeal texture to most breads. It’s naturally gluten-free.

Flour

I’ve used plain (all-purpose flour) for this recipe. Other plain or low in gluten flours can be used as well, but it will change the taste of this recipe. You can use anything from spelt, buckwheat, wholemeal plain or specialist lupin flour.

Milk

Whist normally, this recipe would used buttermilk, I’ve replaced with a dairy free, plant based milk. I usually use oat or almond milk, but cashew or soya milk is fine too. Coconut milk can ad a bit too much coconut flavour, so I wouldn’t use it for this recipe.

Recently I started to see oat based single cream in my local health shop, which I thought would make the perfect replacement for the original buttermilk. So, if you happen to see plant based cream, use that with a teaspoon or vinegar or lemon juice to replace the milk/buttermilk in this recipe.

If you want a truly budget friendly cornbread recipe, just swap the milk for water (or water down the milk, if you don’t have enough). This will change the flavour of the cornbread slightly, but not so drastically, that you won’t be able to make it and eat it.

The method – Instructions

• Preheat your oven to 190C (375F), Gas Mark 5.
• Prepare your tin (round or square) by lining it with a baking parchment
• Mix the flour, sugar salt, baking powder and baking soda together in a medium sized bowl.
• Add the cornmeal and mix in to the flour.
• In another bowl or a measuring jug, mix the plant based milk and oil and sligthly whisk it together.
• Pour the plant based milk mixture into the flour mixture and mix together, but don’t over mix it.
• Pour the batter into your prepared tin and place in the oven (middle shelf)
• Bake innitially for 10 minutes on 190C (375C) and then reduce the oven temperature down to 180C (350C) or Gas mark 4. Bake for another 15-20 minutes until the cornbread is lightly golden/brown on the top. Check with a wooden skewer to see if the cornbread is ready (if it comes out clean/dry it’s done)
• Leave to cool down in the tin for about 10 minutes (resting on a cooling rack) and then take out completely and place on the cooling rack. If you can peel of the baking parchment, do this now to prevent the cornbread sweating.
• Serve as a side dish/bread with your main meal.

Variation on this recipe

You can add a heaped handful (roughly 1/2 – 3/4 cup) of any of the following ingredients combinations

• Cheese & Onion – sautéed onion finely chopped with grated cheddar cheese
• Red Pepper & Herbs – sauteed red pepper finely chopped with fresh herbs
• Cheese – add a roughly grated cheese
• Herbs – chopped up fresh mixed herbs, such as parsley, basil, chives etc

What can you serve vegan cornbread with

• Leek & Potato Soup >>
• Vegetable Soup >>
• Baked Potato Soup >>

Scalling up this recipe

You can easily double up this recipe and bake large tray of cornbread or split it between smaller tins. Make sure that you adjust the time depending on how deep your trays are (not so much on how many cornbreads you have in the oven).

Can this recipe be made in advance?

Cornbread keeps well, but it’s still best eaten within 2-3 days from baking it.

How to store cornbread

Loose plastic bag should do the trick and you can always freeze the cornbread on the same day you baked it and keep it for up to 3 months in the freezer. Defrost overnight in the room temperature.

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