My relationship with cornbread has been love-hate to say the least. The beloved and I are making our stand here in Southwestern Ontario and, to my knowledge, cornbread is not really a traditional kitchen table staple. But, my lovely bride has roots in the USA in states where it has serious street cred and, it turns out, she loves her some good cornbread. So, I’m embarrassed to say it took me better than a decade to find a recipe that worked… for me at least as well as her.

I’ve never enjoyed the grit effect cornmeal can have in a bread and cornbread often come across as a little bland to my tastebuds. But I am persistent if not even a little single minded so I was pleased to find and adapt this recipe from 15Spatulas.com. It produces a slightly cakey texture that seems to counteract the grit you’ll still get even from finely ground cornmeal. And it’s sweet flavour also works for me.

But, because we’re all about healthy alternatives to tried and true old favourites here, I’ll let you in on a Veteran Move that takes the refined sugar right out of the original recipe. In this recipe you can replace the sugar either with honey or even maple syrup. Either of these two naturally produced, usually unprocessed sweeteners, are typically considered lower calorie, better-for-you than sweetening with sugar.

A good rule of thumb when substituting either is to reduce the amount of other liquid in any recipe calling for at least a cup by 3 tablespoons per cup. And, its a good idea to turn down cooking temperature by about 25 degrees Fahrenheit. This is usually not necessary if the recipe uses substantially less than a cup of liquid, say anything less than a half cup.

Using less than a cup of liquid? Its very easy to work honey into just about any recipe if you follow this conversion chart: Honey for Sugar . Working Maple Syrup into a recipe might need some trial and error but here’s a good article to give you some guidance.