Honey Butter Cornbread with Jalapeños

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This is the only cornbread recipe you’ll ever need. I say that with confidence because cornbread is a favorite in my house, and I’ve tweaked this recipe many times until I could finally say that it was the best cornbread recipe out there.

The perfect cornbread should be moist, fluffy and just a little crumbly. And that’s exactly how this from scratch cornbread turns out every single time thanks to my favorite trick.

Cornbread is one of those recipes that’s really easy to put together and always looks amazing when it comes out of the oven with those golden edges. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been disappointed biting into a piece of beautifully golden, fluffy-looking cornbread only for it to be dry and overly crumbly. With this recipe, that’s not a problem you’ll ever have again.

This flavorful, slightly sweet cornbread has just a hint of spice from the jalapeños (and it can be made without them, too). The honey butter really takes it to the next level. It’s perfect as a holiday or BBQ side dish, or just on its own warm with a little extra honey butter.

Table of Contents

Quick Recipe Overview

Flavors: This cornbread has all the flavors of a classic cornbread and uses honey for a rich, sweet taste. The jalapeños add an amazing, spicy kick and the honey butter perfectly balances the heat from the jalapeños.

Tips for the best cornbread:

• The secret to making sure your cornbread always comes out perfectly fluffy and moist is all in the first step of this recipe. Let your cornmeal soak in the milk before adding that mixture to the rest of the batter. This step is key, so make sure you don’t skip it!

Difficulty: Cornbread comes together quickly and uses ingredients you probably already have in your pantry, so this is an easy recipe.

Time: You do need to wait while you let your cornmeal and milk mixture soak for 10-15 minutes, but you’ll have time to dice your jalapeños and get all the rest of your ingredients measured in the meantime, so this recipe flows very quickly once you get started. The not-so-fun part is when you have to have a little patience while you’re waiting for it to come out of the oven.

How to make Honey Butter Cornbread with Jalapeños

The key to this cornbread is NOT to mix the cornmeal in with your dry ingredients like most cornbread recipes tell you to. Cornmeal is coarse and gritty, so giving it some time to soften before adding it to your batter really makes a big difference. I’m going to remind you several times throughout this recipe how important this step is, because it’s my secret (well, it was) to super moist and soft cornbread every single time.

To start, get all your ingredients together then preheat your oven to 350℉/180℃. Grease your 9×9 inch square baking dish with butter or neutral oil or line it with parchment paper. I never have issues with this cornbread sticking to the baking dish, but parchment paper makes it easier to remove the cornbread from the baking dish whole.

Here’s how to make this Honey Butter Cornbread with Jalapeños:

Combine the Cornmeal and Milk

This is the most important step in this recipe. Have I mentioned that yet? All you need to do is combine the cup of cornmeal and the 1 ¼ cups buttermilk or milk in a medium mixing bowl and stir that together. Let it soak together for at least 10 minutes before combining it with any other ingredients. You can soak it for a lot longer as well, even a few hours or up to a day, but I find 15-20 minutes is perfect.

If you want to know all the science-y stuff that explains why this trick works so well, here’s a quick summary: little tiny pieces of cornmeal are sharp and gritty and can cut through the strands of gluten formed by the flour. Soaking it helps make those little individual bits of cornmeal softer and more tender. As an added bonus, soaking the cornmeal actually makes it easier to digest.

Trust me, you don’t want to skip this step.

Mix your Dry and Wet Ingredients

Making this holiday staple from scratch might seem a little intimidating, but I promise it’s actually super easy. The batter for this cornbread comes together really quickly, and the ingredients are mostly pantry staples you probably already have on hand.

You need two more mixing bowls, and you’ll want one of those to be very big. I know, I made you use an extra bowl for the cornmeal mixture. Rest assured this recipe is well worth washing one extra bowl.

In one bowl, add the 1 ½ cups of flour, the tablespoon of baking powder and the teaspoon of salt. Whisk those together then set that bowl aside while you do the same with your wet ingredients in the second bowl. In that bowl, combine the ¾ cup of sugar, the 3 eggs, the 3 tablespoons of Greek yogurt, the ½ cup of honey and the ½ cup of melted and slightly cooled butter and whisk that together until everything is smooth and combined.

Make the Batter

Now we just combine everything for the cornbread batter. Use the biggest of the three bowls you have in front of you to make mixing easier. When baking, I typically prefer to pour my dry ingredients into my wet ingredients, but vice versa is just fine. Here, since we need a lot of room to mix all of our ingredients, just combine everything in whichever bowl is the biggest out of the three you’re using.

Once you’ve combined the dry ingredients, the wet ingredients, and that cornmeal/milk mixture, which by now should have a thick, sludge-like consistency (I really wish there was a better word to describe that, honestly). Using a rubber or wooden spatula, stir everything together until it’s combined, but don’t overmix. If there are a few small lumps remaining, that’s perfectly fine. The batter should be a fairly thin consistency; not liquidy, but still very pourable.

Stir in the Jalapeños

The last step before baking is to add in your jalapeños. Just throw them into the batter and gently stir them in.

The jalapeños in this recipe are technically optional, but they add the perfect touch of heat to the cornbread that pairs so well with that rich, sweet honey flavor. I usually use two medium diced jalapeños (about 2 inches long), but you can use just one if you’d like a milder heat, or even just leave them out altogether. That’s completely up to you and what you prefer; the cornbread will be delicious either way.

Garnish and Bake the Cornbread

Your cornbread is ready to bake! Pour that batter into the baking dish you prepared earlier and spread it out evenly.

If you sliced an extra jalapeño to decorate the top of your cornbread, place the slices all over the cornbread.

Bake at 350℉/180℃ for 35-40 minutes. Stare impatiently into the oven the entire time. The cornbread is done when it’s golden brown around the edges and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Make the Honey Butter

While the cornbread is baking, make the easiest 3-ingredient honey butter. All you need to do is melt the 2 tablespoons of butter in a small heatproof bowl, then stir in the 2 tablespoons of honey and the pinch of salt.

Taste the honey butter. If you’d like it to be a little sweeter, add another tablespoon of honey.

This will give you more than enough honey butter to cover the cornbread, but I like to make a double batch so that I can spread more honey butter over each individual piece. Every single bite is a mixture of warm cornbread, spicy jalapeños, sweet, rich honey. It’s the perfect balance, and I usually eat two pieces within 30 minutes of taking this out of the oven.

Glaze and Cut the Cornbread into Squares

Once that cornbread is finally done baking, take it out of the oven and give it a little time to cool so the honey butter doesn’t just drip off the sides once you brush it onto the cornbread. After 10-15 minutes, pour or brush that honey butter all over the top of the cornbread (you might have to warm up the honey butter in the microwave for 10 seconds or so because it may have solidified a bit while the cornbread was still in the oven).

Cut the cornbread into 12 pieces and serve.

Recipe FAQs

More bread recipes you might like

• Easy No Knead Cheddar Jalapeño Bread
• Homemade Naan Bread

Recipe Card

Honey Butter Cornbread with Jalapeños

by Jenna

The BEST super moist and fluffy cornbread recipe. Perfect as a holiday or BBQ side dish or just on its own, warmed up with a little bit of extra honey butter.

5 from 1 vote

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 35 minutes mins

Total Time 55 minutes mins

Servings 12 pieces

Equipment

• 1 9×9 inch square baking dish, silicone, glass or metal
• 3 mixing bowls
• 1 whisk
• 1 spatula, rubber or wooden

Ingredients

 

US CustomaryMetric

 

1x2x3x

• ▢ 1 cup cornmeal
• ▢ 1 ¼ cups buttermilk or milk (see Note 1)
• ▢ 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
• ▢ 1 tbsp baking powder
• ▢ 1 tsp salt
• ▢ ¾ cup granulated sugar
• ▢ 3 large eggs
• ▢ 3 tbsp Greek yogurt (see Note 2)
• ▢ ½ cup honey
• ▢ ½ cup unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
• ▢ 1-2 jalapeños, seeded and finely diced (see Note 3)

Honey Butter

• ▢ 2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• ▢ 2-3 tbsp honey, to taste
• ▢ Pinch salt

Optional

• ▢ 1 jalapeño, thinly sliced into rings, for garnish
• ▢ Butter or neutral oil, for greasing the baking dish

Instructions

 

• Gather all your equipment and ingredients then preheat your oven to 350℉/180℃ and grease a 9×9 inch square baking dish with butter or neutral oil, or line with parchment paper
• In a medium bowl, mix together the cornmeal and milk and set the mixture aside for at least 10-15 minutes (see Note 4)
• In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt
• In another large bowl, whisk together the sugar, eggs, Greek yogurt, honey and butter until smooth
• Add the dry ingredients and the cornmeal and milk mixture to the wet ingredients and mix with a spatula until smooth and just combined (a few small lumps in the batter are okay)
• Fold the diced jalapeños into the batter
• Transfer the batter to the prepared baking dish (it will be fairly thin and should be easy to pour)
• Top with the slices of jalapeño to garnish
• Bake for 35-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the edges are golden brown
• While the cornbread cools, make the honey butter; in a heatproof bowl, mix together the melted butter, honey and salt until smooth
• When the cornbread has mostly cooled, brush or pour the honey butter all over the top then cut into squares and serve

Notes

1. I’ve made this recipe several times with both buttermilk and regular milk. Both come out fantastic, so don’t worry about swapping one for the other depending what you have on hand. The Greek yogurt in this recipe also adds a hint of acidity, so whole milk, 2% or 1% milk all work just fine.

2. As I mentioned right above, the Greek yogurt adds a hint of tang and acidity to the cornbread. You can swap it out for sour cream or plain yogurt, or even just leave it out and add in an extra ¼ cup of buttermilk. If you’re leaving it out, I’d recommend using buttermilk instead of regular milk so the final product doesn’t lose that little hint of acid.

3. Use 1 or 2 jalapeños depending on the level of spice you prefer. If you prefer to leave them out altogether, that’s totally fine too.

4. I’ve probably said it 10 times throughout this recipe, but don’t skip this step or mix the cornmeal in with your dry ingredients. Letting the cornmeal sit with the milk for a little while before combining the rest of your ingredients is the key to making sure your cornbread never, ever turns out dry again.

Nutrition Facts are calculated automatically and could be inaccurate.

Nutrition

Serving: 1 pieceCalories: 343kcalCarbohydrates: 53gProtein: 6gFat: 13gSaturated Fat: 7gPolyunsaturated Fat: 1gMonounsaturated Fat: 4gTrans Fat: 0.4gCholesterol: 70mgSodium: 392mgPotassium: 132mgFiber: 2gSugar: 30gVitamin A: 454IUVitamin C: 0.3mgCalcium: 104mgIron: 2mg

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