I can say without a doubt this is one of my best recipes yet. It’s hard to describe this cornbread without using foul language, but let me just say this ain’t ya momma’s cornbread!
I don’t know what I like more – the soft, fluffy texture of the cornbread or the crave worthy candied bacon topping. They’re just so good together!
Cooking this cornbread was easy because I baked it in a sectioned cast iron skillet I got from Carolina Cooker. If you haven’t seen my other posts, Carolina Cooker is a product line created by Agri Supply, a locally founded farm supply store with several locations across the southeast. They gave me this skillet as a gift to cook with and when I saw it, my first thought was to use it for cornbread. As you can see it has 8 sections so it’s already proportioned for you. This way you don’t have to worry about making a crumbly mess cutting it into pieces after it’s cooked.
Another thing I love about this product is the crisp it gives your cornbread. I like my cornbread to be very soft and fluffy on the inside with a little crisp on the outside. The cast iron material crisps each piece individually resulting in 8 equal pieces of perfect cornbread. If you’d like to check out this product and the rest of their line, follow this link:
https://www.agrisupply.com/carolina-cooker-wedge-skillet-8-slices/p/101665/
USING DIFFERENT PANS: If you choose not to purchase the Carolina Cooker skillet and are looking for an alternative baking pan, your best choice is a muffin tin. When I tried to bake this in a regular cast iron skillet without sections, the middle was slightly underdone. Muffin tins are a good pan to use and you still get individual servings.
I wanted my cornbread recipe to be a reflection of the best of North Carolina, so that’s how I got the idea to incorporate sweet potatoes, one of NC’s most popular agricultural products. Did you know NC is the largest producer of Sweet Potatoes? I also incorporated corn meal from Old Mill of Guilford, a historic 18th century NC grist mill.
The first step to this cornbread is roasting the sweet potatoes. All I do is roast them in a 425 degree oven for about an hour – depending on the size of the potato. Obviously less time for a smaller sweet potato, and more for a larger one. I roasted 2 for this recipe but only ended up needing one. Make sure you poke holes in your sweet potato before baking with the tine of a fork – this is so some of the steam can escape from the potato.
After you bring the sweet potatoes out and let them cool, you can put your bacon in the oven. This candied bacon is actually very simple. You mix together maple syrup and brown sugar into a thin paste and glaze the bacon strips before roasting them in the oven, turning and re-glazing them halfway.
The bacon is ready to come out when it’s crispy and very dark, right on the edge of burnt. I know this bacon looks slightly burnt, but that’s only because the glaze darkens the bacon. If you take the bacon out too early it won’t crumble because it won’t be crisp enough.
I cooked half a lb. of bacon for this recipe and had extra leftover but I decided not to change the recipe dimensions… honestly, is there such as thing as too much bacon? Once you taste this bacon you’ll be glad you made a couple extra pieces!
Once the bacon is done, your sweet potatoes should be cool enough to touch. Peel off the outer layer of the sweet potatoes, and mash 1 cup’s worth. Now you’re ready to mix together the cornbread which takes a whopping 3-5 minutes!
Before filling the skillet, I sprayed cooking spray generously inside of it to make sure all the pieces came out easily. They popped out with so little effort which was nice!
While the cornbread is cooking, crumble the bacon and set it aside. I cooked my cornbread for 20 minutes and it turned out perfect. If you notice that the top of the cornbread is getting too brown, you can cover it in a sheet of foil and continue baking. I didn’t need to do this, but every oven is slightly different.
How good does this look?! The cornbread only has a little bit of honey in it, so the taste is perfect and not sweet but has just a hint of the honey coming through. The candied bacon is to die for and compliments the flavors of the cornbread really well.
This recipe is the perfect side to compliment any southern meal – fried chicken, a New Orleans gumbo, chicken pastry, smoked pulled pork BBQ (hello!), whatever you can dream up! It’s perfect for fall. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do!
Sweet Potato Cornbread with Candied Bacon Crumble
Ingredients
For the Candied Bacon Crumble:
- 1/2 lb. bacon
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 1/4 cup light brown sugar
For the Cornbread:
- 3/4 cup self-rising cornmeal
- 3/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3 tbsp unsalted butter, cold
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup mashed sweet potato
- 1/3 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mix together maple syrup and brown sugar in a small bowl. Lay strips of bacon on a foil lined baking sheet and brush the top side with a thin layer of the syrup and sugar mixture.
- Bake for 15 minutes, flip the bacon and glaze the other side, then bake another 15 minutes until the bacon is crispy. Remove from the oven, transfer bacon onto a clean plate, and set aside.
- For the cornbread, in a medium mixing bowl whisk together the dry ingredients – cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt. Cut the butter into small cubes and use a pastry cutter to incorporate into the dry ingredients, until the butter is reduced to small crumbs in the mixture. Add the eggs, sweet potato, sour cream, buttermilk, honey, and cinnamon and stir until combined.
- Fill the skillet with the cornbread mixture and bake for 20-25 minutes at 425 degrees. If not using a sectioned cast iron skillet, use a muffin tin instead. If the cornbread is getting too dark on top, cover with foil for the last 5-10 minutes of baking. While the cornbread is baking, crumble the bacon. Serve hot with crumbled bacon on top.
