Vegan and Gluten Free Cornbread

A standard comfort food in most households. Something you slather with butter and drizzle with honey. A simple side dishes that everyone swears that they make the best one.

I used to be one of those people with you dress my cornbread in toppings so high that you couldn’t even taste cornbread anymore. This isn’t a terrible thing to do, but when you are trying to set goals for yourself eating like this will make it for challenging.

I have loved cornbread all my life, but I know that it isn’t the healthiest thing you can put inside your body. So I found a way to make cornbread not only good for you, but great tasting as well.

Whenever I want to take a crowd favorite recipe and turn it into something healthy, I look up a basic recipe and go from there. When making something vegan, I take out the eggs, add in a replacement, take out the milk, add in a nut milk; and so forth. Same goes for making something gluten free, use almond or chickpea flour. Everyone always says, “it must be hard to not eat meat, not eat dairy, making something gluten free.” But really it’s not. It’s quite easy, once you get to know what replacements you can use.

For this particular recipe, I made this cornbread vegan and gluten free. I used chickpea flour instead of regular. Used almond milk as the liquid, and opted out butter and used coconut oil instead. When making this, I didn’t want it to be your typical sweet cornbread. I didn’t want the added sugar in it, I just feel like that is completely unnecessary. I wanted it to have that stone ground corn taste, and to not have the sugar take away from the natural flavor of the cornbread. I added in whole corn to add texture, and also chopped up jalapenos for a kick.

For this recipe, you could buy chickpea flour, but that can get pretty expensive. If you’re on a budget, like I am, try making your own. At Ralph’s, they sell dried chickpeas for $2 a pound! I only purchased maybe a quarter pound, so I literally spent nothing for it. All you need is a food processor, or a blender, to make it. Give yourself some time though, because it is a process and will take some time to make. I suggest using small batches at a time, and sifting when everything is almost blended up so you get a smoother texture. This will take a while, so be patient and trust the process, and remember you’re saving money. On top of being gluten free, chickpea flour is high in protein and rich in fiber and iron. One cup has 21 grams of protein! Talk about getting some gains too while you eat this.

Alright, enough of me talking!

Let’s get cookin’!

Servings: 9

Vegan and Gluten Free

Category: Side dish

Prep time: 30 minutes Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

» 1 ¼ cup cornmeal

» 1 cup chickpea flour

» 1 cup non-dairy milk (almond milk is what I used)

» ¾ cup canned or frozen corn

» ½ jalapeno

» 5 tablespoons coconut oil, melted

» ½ tsp salt

» 1 tbsp baking powder

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 ° F, then line a 9x9 inch pan with parchment paper and spray lightly with cooking spray.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, add all ingredients

3. Gently mix everything together, and try not to over mix, if batter becomes a little too dry you can always add in splashes of almond milk to make batter moist.

4. Once combined, pour into greased pan, smooth over with spatula, you can also tap the cornbread a couple times on the counter to make everything level.

5. Let cook for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick in center is pulled out clean.

6. Once cooled, carefully lift cornbread out of pan and cut into squares. I made about 9 squares they were on the smaller size, but you can cut to desired thickness that you prefer.

Feel free to double this recipe if you are bringing to a get together, or a family dinner. This would also pair extremely well with homemade sriracha honey butter. All you would do is place the amount of vegan butter that you want into a bowl, add in a tbsp of sriracha, a tsp of honey, mix and place into freezer until serving.

Macro and Micro Breakdown

» 280 calories

» 9 grams protein

» 40 grams carbs

» 9 grams fat

» 8 grams fiber

» 6 grams saturated fat

» 2 grams unsaturated fat

» 240 mg of sodium

» 0 mg cholesterol

» 202 mg potassium

I use #lifesum to track all my macros and to make sure that I am staying on track. This is not an add, I've been using this app for over a year now. It really has kept me on check to make sure I'm getting the right nutrients every day.

Hope you enjoy!

Let me know what you think :)

#vegan #glutenfree #cornbread