College Corn Bread

This is the second recipe in my college recipe series and came from my roommate, Connie, whose laugh I can still remember. It was hearty and loud and came from deep down in her soul. Connie was from Houston and had just a touch of a Texas accent, which made everything she said sound wiser and funnier and truer. It was the perfect accent.

The two of us used to cook for a bunch of woebegone boys in apartment 306 and later for some more woebegone boys in apartment 204. Why would I remember those apartment numbers? The brain is so mysterious. Anyway, the boys would pay for the food and Connie and I would cook the dinner meal plus get to eat with the guys. It was a pretty good arrangement, free food and good company. It was fun to socialize and get a much needed break from the worries of books and classes and homework.

Back in the day, Marie Callendar’s made some outstanding cornbread.  Marie’s recipes were the ones that set our world on fire back then.  You have to understand those were the days before the good food chain restaurant explosion.  No Appleby’s, no Chilis, no Macaroni Grill, no Olive Garden…we were stuck with Burger King, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut.  Not much inspiration in that group, except that there would be an occasional person who thought that they had figured out Mickey D’s special sauce.  Wait, I forgot one…Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Everyone was chasing after those umpteen secret herbs and spices.

But, back to the cornbread.  Connie, had heard that if you mixed a cake mix with a corn bread mix the resulting product tasted just like Marie Callendar’s cornbread.  We were cooking for apartment 306 at the time and they were pretty easy to please; all of them except for the vegetarian who did a nasal cleansing twice day, looked at our food with disdain, and liked uber skinny girls.  The rest of the boys, though, were good barometer’s for our kitchen experiments.

As odd as it seemed to Connie and me to mix corn bread and cake mix, we gave it a try.  It was a total success and we felt like kitchen geniuses.

The recipe is ridiculously easy.  I hope you can handle it.  I don’t know if it has an official name, so I just call it College Cornbread.

For other recipes in this series see:
Chicken Spaghetti
Lemon Bisque

College Cornbread
Recipe @ that’s some good cookin’
Printable Recipe

• 1 box (18.25 ounces) yellow cake mix (I used a Pillsbury mix)
• 2 boxes (8.5 ounces) Jiffy cornbread mix

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375-degrees.
2. Mix the yellow cake mix according to package directions.
3. In a separate bowl prepare the cornbread mixes according to package directions.  Remember that you are essentially doubling the ingredients listed on the back of one of the boxes.
4. In a large bowl, mix together the batters from the cake mix and the cornbread mixes.
5. This makes quite a bit of cornbread so this is the part of the recipe where you have to make some decisions.  You can make any of the following: 36 muffins; 1-9″ x 13″ pan + 1-8″ x 8″ pan; 12 muffins + 1-8″ x 8″ pan.  Use what you need then freeze the rest for later use.
6. Serve with butter or honey butter.