grandma’s favorite cornpones

My grandma passed away this morning after several months of hospice care. While I am glad that she isn’t suffering, I will miss the relationship we had recently developed. She was never one to gush, so it meant a lot to me that she enjoyed my cooking and told me (and other people!) so.

One of her favorite things to make as a side or a snack was corn pones! I laughed when I saw a blog post about them last month and immediately sent it to my dad.

She had a cast iron pan specially designed to make 7 of these corn-cob-shaped sticks.

It even came with a recipe, but she didn’t like that one and modified it so suit her purposes (and make exactly one pan’s worth) years ago.

Grandma’s Corn Pones
Makes 7 corn bread sticks

Ingredients:
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 400F.
Generously grease corn pone pan with shortening and place in oven while it preheats.
In a medium mixing bowl, stir together dry ingredients. In a small mixing bowl, combine milk, egg, and oil. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.
Pour all batter evenly into hot pan. Bake for 20 minutes at 400F.
Serve warm with butter and honey.

I forgot to preheat the pan for this batch which is why they aren’t as pretty as usual.

The tuna melts with asparagus I posted last week was the last lunch we shared. I think I will still photograph and post a few of the other recipes she enjoyed (it’s food I eat anyway!), for posterity if nothing else.