Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Vegan Feast Kitchen/ 23rd Century Table

For some reason, I've been obsessed with spoonbread this last week or so.  No, I didn't grow up in the American South (though some of maternal ancestors were from Arkansas, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia).  But I do love corn in any form and making a good vegan spoonbread has been a goal of mine for quite a few years.  Today I'm offering you two versions.  Neither of them is the old-fashioned soufflé type (I haven't mastered a vegan version of that yet!).  The old-fashioned spoonbread is made from cooked cornmeal mush, either yellow or white, eggs (often with the whites beaten separately), butter and milk (or cream).  No wonder John Edgerton, author of Southern Food, wrote that it is "the lightest, richest, and most delicious of all cornmeal dishes, a veritable cornbread soufflé."

The spoonbread varieties made with un-separated eggs are heavier, more of an "everyday" spoonbread, I suppose. These are the types that are best suited to being made vegan, but I have plans to tackle the soufflé version soon!

I tried a couple of vegan versions made with cooked mush, but, so far, they have been on the heavy side, so I'm going to have to do more work on that.  For the moment, I decided to try a more modern version, and to re-visit a type of cornbread that I made for years, that I didn't know was also often referred to as a type of spoonbread.  I was aiming for a reasonably light, very moist product (but not gooey) that could be scooped out of the pan. Unfortunately, the modern versions contain less corn than the original spoonbread, but I'm going to see if I can remedy that in future.

My first recipe is a moist, sumptuous "casserole bread" that utilizes a biscuit mix and canned cream-style corn (which actually IS vegan).  It is definitely a modern version of this bread type, but a popular one, judging by the avalanche of related recipes that I found online!  I make my own biscuit mix (recipe provided below) and my vegan recipe avoids not only the eggs, but the sour cream, excessive butter or margarine, cheese, and heavy cream that is called for in many similar recipes.

The second recipe is actually a cornbread that I made for years and never thought of as a spoonbread-- it's a cornbread that's made in such a way that it ends up with a creamy layer of "custard" on the bottom.  It's made in the same way as a pudding cake, with liquid poured over the batter at the last minute before baking. But, in my research, I started to see this type of cornbread referred to as a spoonbread, so I decided to veganize that recipe, too.  It's so comforting!  

I happen to own 3 versions of Joy of Cooking, so I looked up this recipe in all of them to see if it had changed much over the years-- and, indeed, it has, as the ratio of cornmeal to flour has gradually changed. In my 1946 version, the recipe contained 6 tablespoons of cornmeal and 2 tablespoons of bread flour.  In my 1973 version, the recipe contained 1/2 cup cornmeal and 1/4 cup flour.  In the 1997 version, the recipe contains 6 tablespoons cornmeal to 1/2 cup flour (actually, they have doubled that to make a "fatter" bread).

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Spoonbread (particularly soufflé type) is often served with special meals and holiday meals, but any type makes a great breakfast food, drizzled with a bit of maple syrup.  It's also delicious with spicy beans and stews, or with cooked greens.

NOTE ABOUT EGG REPLACERS:  In these recipes, I used powdered commercial egg replacers because they are easily available and can be used by most people. However, if you happen to have a copy of either of the delightful books by Crescent Dragonwagon, The Cornbread Gospels or Bean by Bean: a Cookbook (on p. 255), you can use her inventive homemade egg sub that she calls "Eggscellence" (on pps. 352-353). (You can see the recipe here, too.)   I am planning to play with using the new vegan egg yolk sub, The Vegg (UPDATE: The Vegg is not available in Canada at this time) and also Aquafaba, in future as well.


Printable Recipe (includes Biscuit Mix recipe)


   Enjoy!