Corn bake with ideas above its station
Too soft to slice, too rich to be bread. Bring a spoon.
At a Glance
Story
This is part cornbread and part corn pudding, and the sleight of hand is doing both at once. The muffin mix wants to set into a dry crumb, the creamed corn refuses to let it, so it bakes up soft and spoonable in the middle with just enough structure to scoop. It is the sort of dish a family recites from memory rather than reads, one box, one stick, one tub, and never writes down because nobody ever needed to.
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted buttersoftened (plus more for the dish)
- 1 × 14 oz can creamed corn
- 1 × 15 oz can corn kernelsdrained
- 2 eggslightly beaten
- 1 × 8 oz box corn muffin mixsuch as Jiffy
- 8 oz crème fraîche
Method
Every family has one of these, the dish somebody's aunt makes that is gone before the mains arrive. This is that dish. Sour cream is the usual move here and I will not have it, so crème fraîche stands in, a little richer and a little more grown-up, doing the same tangy, tenderising work. Otherwise leave it exactly as humble as it is. Reaching for fresh corn or scratch cornbread here misses the entire point of it.
- Heat the oven to 350 degrees and butter an 8-by-8-inch or 2½-quart baking dish.
- In a large bowl, stir together the butter, creamed corn, drained corn kernels, eggs, muffin mix and crème fraîche until just combined. One bowl, one spoon, no ceremony.
- Scrape the batter into the dish and smooth the top. Bake until set and lightly browned, about 40 minutes. Scoop it out with a big spoon while it is still warm and yielding.
Make ahead if you are the organized sort. Bake it, cool it to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate up to a week and reheat at 325 degrees for about 15 minutes. It travels to a potluck better than almost anything.
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