Cornbread Cake

Last week on Twitter I mentioned a rough recipe for this Cornbread Cake, immediately began craving it, and went to the store for the ingredients the same day. It’s been years, so while I was at it I figured I might as well post it here and show y’all what it looks like while I’m at it.

I originally saw this ‘recipe’ on a message board in a mommy group probably 10 or 15 years ago. It wasn’t really a recipe, just a screenshot of someone’s Facebook post: a picture of a piece of cornbread with a short paragraph underneath saying to easily duplicate Boston Market’s cornbread, just combine Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix with yellow cake mix and bake it at 350°F until a toothpick comes out clean.

It was an immediate hit in my house and remained in heavy rotation until I perfected my from-scratch version, which is the Cornbread Cake Muffin recipe in my first digital cookbook As Seen on IG. I’ll be adding that recipe directly to the site soon, so stay tuned!

Cornbread Cake Ingredients

Feel free to jump to the full recipe, but here are useful notes about the ingredients you will need to make this Cornbread Cake recipe:

• Butter Cake Mix: I strongly recommend using Duncan Hines’ Butter Golden cake mix. In my opinion it’s the best one to use to make this Cornbread Cake taste as close to homemade as possible. When I’ve been unable to find it I substitute another Butter-flavored cake mix. On a couple of occasions when I couldn’t find butter I used yellow cake mix instead. Most yellow cake mixes call for a certain amount of vegetable oil: you’ll need to replace it with an equal amount of melted butter.
• Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix: I think most (Black) folks are familiar with Jiffy mix, if only in conversation. I never had it as a kid (it contains pork derivatives) but as an adult still learning to cook I fell deeply in love with it (adding sugar, of course). You’ll need two boxes of the basic stuff. I’ve never used the Vegetarian version but if you have experience with it and like it, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.
• Eggs, water, milk: These are the other ingredients called for on the box mixes. I didn’t list oil because if your box calls for that you’re replacing it with melted butter, remember? You’ll make each box mix according to its package directions, then combine the two batters together.
• Salted butter: As stated above, if you can’t find Butter Cake mix, you’ll be replacing the oil called for on your box of yellow cake mix with melted butter. Salted tastes best to me, but that’s up to you. We’ll rub the top of the Cornbread Cake with it as soon as we pull it from the oven, too. And then put a pat of butter on each slice as we serve it. And keep applying butterr to almost every bite until it’s gone…
• Equipment: This makes a healthy amount of cornbread! It’ll fill a 9×13″ baking dish, two 8″ cast iron skillets, or about 32 muffin cups, depending on how much you fill them. I usually go for cast iron skillets or my Wilton Perfect Loaves pan. Here’s everything I used:

How to Make Cornbread Cake 

Full instructions are included in the recipe below, but here is a basic overview of what you’ll need to do, along with some important tidbits to help you make the most of this Cornbread Cake recipe:

• Mise En Place. Preheat the oven to 350°F and place a rack in the center of the oven. Measure everything out, and decide whether you’ll be beating it by hand with a whisk or an electric mixer, of if you’re pulling out the stand mixer. You’ll also need to decide what you’re baking it in. Whatever dish(es) you’re using, make sure to grease ’em lightly so the Cornbread Cake doesn’t stick. I recommend butter or oil if cast iron, pan grease or baking spray if glass or another metal.
• Beat the batters. In two separate bowls, make the batters: cake mix in one and the two boxes of corn muffin mix in the other. I generally use a whisk and elbow grease to beat the lumps out, but I have used a hand mixer before, too.
• Fold ’em together. Pour half of the cake batter into the cornbread batter and fold them together with a silicone spatula or wooden spoon. Then fold in the remaining cake batter. Pick up the bowl a couple of inches off the counter and drop it, to encourage any bubbles to pop and rise.
• Into the oven! Pour the Cornbread Cake batter into the baking dish – evenly between them if using more than one – and tap the pan on the counter to even the level out. Bake in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes, until golden browned and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
• Enjoy. Rub the top all over with butter, and eat it. Dassit!

Instead of Making this Cornbread Cake

As I mentioned in my Browned Butter Honey Cornbread post, I love eating sweet, fluffy cornbread. I also just enjoy making cornbread, so I’ve got quite a few recipes! My grandfather loved my Jalapeno Cheddar cornbread in particular, I can’t wait to share that one! Here’s a list of all of the cornbread recipes I currently have to offer:

• Buttermilk Sour Cream Cornbread: The most savory of my recipes, this one is available in my ebook “Who Made the Potato Salad?“
• Spiced Honey Cornbread: Cornbread with a lil’ fall flair, this recipe is in the ebook A deepfriedhoney Holiday.
• Cornbread Cake Muffins: The texture and flavor is similar to this, but there’s none of the ‘artificialness’ you might get from this because that one is from scratch. It’s the one I make most often in my videos. As I mentioned before, it’s available in As Seen on IG, but will be here very soon!

Obligatory Pinterest graphics:

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