Bacon-Maple Cornbread

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. First, cook the bacon in a frying pan over medium heat. Don’t crank the heat too high. Slower cooking ensures that you render more fat from the strips of meat; this is good. Drain the bacon on paper towels and reserve 3 tablespoons of the fat. (If this is does not yield enough fat, you may supplement it with vegetable oil.) If you have extra bacon fat, lightly coat a 9” by 9” pan with it. If you do not, use butter to coat the pan.
3. While the bacon cooks, stir together the cornmeal, flour, salt, baking powder and brown sugar in a mixing bowl. Set aside.
4. Mix together the maple syrup, eggs and milk, using a fork to break apart and beat the eggs. Add the bacon grease in a slow stream - adding a hot liquid to the mixture all at once will scramble the eggs - and beat to combine.
5. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ones and stir gently a few times with a spatula to combine evenly. Crumble the bacon strips and add into the batter, stirring to combine. Pour the batter into the greased pan and place in the preheated oven.
6. Bake for 35 minutes, until the crust is golden-brown, the edges pull away from the pan and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool, then cut into squares.