A Recipe Hack

 Yesterday’s dinner was an adventure in making.  I have not had corn bread for a couple of years now. I have just needed a piece for a while now. I just love the taste and convenience of Trader Joe’s Cornbread Mix, The mix as prepared by box directions has 14 grams of fat and 40 grams of carbohydrates. That would wreck havoc with my body. So I needed to think about a redo.

As per the box the recipe calls for 1 egg, 1/2 cup of oil and 3/4 cup of milk.  As you can see a whole lot of fat. 

So here is where yesterdays hack took a weird turn. I found my bottle of vegetable oil in the cabinet.  It still had 5 months to the Best Buy sell date. I opened it up and it had gone rancid. Great I had already opened the box and cracked the egg. What was next? To find a different oil of course.  I had some olive oil, now I know in some countries they use olive oil in cakes. Cornbread is more like cake than bread, so I thought why not give it a try. The absolute worst thing that could happen is that the experiment would be tossed. 

So here is my change to make it lower in fat. 1 egg, 1/4 cup of Olive Oil, 1 cup of water. The egg has 5 grams of fat. The olive oil has 54 grams of fat. For a total of 59 grams of fat divided into 9 servings brings the fat content down to a more manageable 6.5 grams of fat per serving. Compare that to 14 grams of fat if you prepare it by the package directions.  It is still higher than I like to go but it is definitely more manageable.

I followed the package mixing and baking directions.  I cooked it for 40 minutes. This is the time it took for the toothpick came out clean. I did notice that it did not brown on top the same way as when following the package directions. I then let it rest for 5 minutes before cutting. 

The corn bread was lighter and more cake like. It was still on the sweet side. It did not need additional Margarine. I knew that I had made a good hack when John went back for a second piece of cornbread. John never goes back for more cornbread. John usually just eats 1 piece of the 9 and leaves the rest of the pan for me. This is why I don’t make it very often. John also made sure to wrap the cornbread up so he could have more with dinner tonight.   

Try it and let me know what you think about it.