Cornbread catastrophe: Results can be salvaged with a bit of honey or dollop of jamSubscriber Exclusive

There’s a list of foods that I associate almost exclusively with my mother: Big Red chewing gum, caramel candy, popcorn balls, M&Ms, fried chicken, biscuits, Cracker Jacks, fudge brownies (without nuts), soft-serve vanilla ice cream and cornbread.

She kept a packet of Big Red gum in her purse so her breath smelled like cinnamon. When she went to the movies, she got M&Ms and Cracker Jacks. When we went to Dairy Queen, she ordered a soft-serve vanilla cone. Fudge brownies are what she made when she wanted a quick but indulgent dessert. The popcorn balls and chewy caramel — well, those are special. Our church discouraged celebrating Halloween so I never went trick-or-treating, but Mom made something sweet on Halloween night so I wouldn’t feel left out.

The fried chicken, biscuits and cornbread are all nods to Mom’s Texas roots. Mom’s fried chicken was the absolute best and her biscuits were pretty dang good, too, but cornbread is what we ate with everything from soups and stews to beans and potatoes. Mom told me that when she was growing up, her family ate cornbread as often as regular bread. She emphasized that it wasn’t sweet but savory, good for grilled cheese sandwiches or toasted and drizzled with molasses. Mom’s favorite way to eat cornbread (and mine, too) was for breakfast, smashed into a cup with milk poured over it, so the cornbread soaked up the milk and made a kind of porridge. That’s how her dad liked cornbread best, she said. He died when my mom was 13, so I never got to meet him, but I like that we have this one thing in common.

When I was looking through my mom’s recipe box, I found not one but four recipes for savory cornbread, including a recipe penciled on a 3-by-5-inch card so warped and stained that it’s difficult to read. I decided to make it because it was the corniest of all the recipes, using no flour whatsoever. For comparison, I also made a recipe for “Old Time Corn Muffins,” printed on vellum-thin, nearly transparent paper apparently cut from a bag of El Molino cornmeal. Neither recipe has a grain of sugar. I was curious to see what my daughter would make of them, since she loves sweet cornbread muffins. (And yes, I do keep a box of Jiffy cornbread muffin mix in my pantry for these cravings. My mother has passed, so she need never know.)

First, my mother’s recipe. Put 2 tablespoons butter in a small cast iron skillet or small baking dish. Put the skillet in a 400 degree oven long enough to completely melt the butter, making sure it covers the bottom of the pan. Meanwhile, mix 1½ cups corn meal with 2 eggs, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ¼ teaspoon baking soda, ¼ teaspoon salt and ¾ cup buttermilk.

Pour into the hot pan and bake at either 400 or 425 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes; the recipe is frustratingly vague on this point. I chose 425 for 25 minutes, and what I got was a hot, brown, corny salt cake. I think when Mom used buttermilk, which contains salt, she must have used Crisco in the skillet instead of butter and reduced the salt to ½ or ¼ teaspoon. And clearly she removed her cornbread from the oven before the crust turned the color of a tree trunk. Undaunted by the sodium tsunami, I cut a wedge and drenched it in honey. It didn’t taste half bad, sort of like kettle corn.

Next, the Old Time Corn Muffins. Sift together 1 2/3 cups corn meal, 1/3 cup flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda and ¼ teaspoon salt. Add 1 beaten egg, 1 cup buttermilk and ¼ cup melted butter. I mixed the batter until it was just moistened then stuck my finger in for a taste. It was still a shade too salty so I panicked and added ¼ cup of sugar. I guess I failed the Southern Authenticity Test. Anyhow, the recipe said to pour the batter into greased muffin cups and bake at 425 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson, but no, I baked them for 25 minutes and they came out brown as bran muffins. Disaster!

I plucked one directly out of the muffin pan and smooshed it into a cup, then poured milk over it. It was delicious, warm and buttery and, yes, just a little sweet. I had another muffin, this time with peach jam. The third muffin, I gave to my daughter, slathered with homemade pear butter. She ate it and asked for another.

It just goes to show: Maybe the things that I think are disasters aren’t disasters at all. Maybe they just need a little sugar, a drizzle of honey or a slather of jam. Or maybe I should just stick to Jiffy muffins.