Addictive, Low-Fat Cornbread

Corn is a great food for human beings. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many corn­bread recipes con­tain cow’s milk and lots of fat. Some of the low-fat veg­an corn­bread recipes pro­duce a prod­uct that is too dry. This recipe makes corn­bread with a gold­en brown crust (thanks to the sug­ar and the cast-iron pan) and a moist and ten­der crumb, thanks to the apple­sauce.

Many recipes for low-fat baked goods call for apple­sauce. The pectin in the apple­sauce coats the starch grains, just as fat would. But who keeps apple­sauce on hand? I cer­tain­ly don’t. You can buy apple­sauce in a jar, but then you have to wor­ry about using it all up before it goes bad. You also have to recy­cle the emp­ty jar. I find it eas­i­er to start with an apple. I zap it in the microwave then put it through a food mill.

I bake my corn­bread in a 9-inch cast-iron skil­let. A prop­er­ly sea­soned cast-iron pan is nat­u­ral­ly non­stick, so you do not have to grease the food to get it to slide out of the pan. When you use cast-iron bake­ware, let it pre­heat in the oven. Give it plen­ty of time to come up to the prop­er tem­per­a­ture before you put in the bat­ter.

1 medi­um-sized bak­ing apple
1 cup whole wheat flour (or a gluten-free flour sub­sti­tute)
1 cup yel­low corn­meal
2 table­spoons sug­ar
1 table­spoon EnerG egg replac­er pow­der
2 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der
½ tea­spoon salt
1 cup low-fat plain soymilk (or oth­er low-fat nondairy milk)

Pre­heat oven and a sea­soned cast-iron skil­let or equiv­a­lent muf­fin pan to 400°F. If you don’t have cast-iron bake­ware, you can use an 8-inch square pan. Use non­stick bake­ware so you do not have to grease it.

Poke holes in the apple and microwave it until it is very soft. Allow the apple to cool enough to be han­dled. Cut it in half and remove the seeds, then put the flesh through a fine food mill. If you do not have a food mill, you could sim­ply scrape the flesh of the apple into a blender or food proces­sor and puree it or sim­ply scrape it into a bowl and mash it real­ly well. Put the apple puree into a mea­sur­ing cup and add enough water to make ¾ cup.

Com­bine the dry ingre­di­ents in a bowl and mix them thor­ough­ly. Add the apple­sauce and soymilk and mix until every­thing is moist­ened. Pour the mix­ture into the hot cast-iron skil­let or corn­bread mold. Bake for 25 min­utes or until a knife blade or cake tester insert­ed into the corn­bread comes out clean.

Pho­to by tris­tanf