The Ingredients

Dry Ingredients

•  Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 Baking Flour is a reliable gluten free option.  Sweet white, brown rice, sorghum, and tapioca flours, potato starch, and xanthan gum are all combined to approximate regular wheat flour. I suppose you could add all those ingredients separately… but using the 1 to  1 blend is just so much easier! If  you prefer another gluten free flour, just check to make sure that it contains Xanthan gum, which mimics the properties of gluten in gluten free baking. If your flour doesn’t have it,  just add it in. Despite it’s scary sounding name, Xanthum gum it’s a natural product made from fermented sugar, so don’t be alarmed, it’s safe to use. 
• Normally I keep a fairly healthy stock of cornmeal on hand,  but Arrowhead Mills organic Yellow Cornmeal has a much finer grind than my usual bulk bin cornmeal.  I think the more refined grind gives a  better texture to the cornbread.
• Baking powder is something you don’t want to leave out of the recipe. It helps, along with the aquafaba, to get a nice fluffy texture. Don’t just use the old dusty box in the back of the cupboard. After time, baking powder loses its strength, so it’s worth it to invest in a brand new box if you haven’t baked in a while.
• If you like a sweet cornbread, you can increase the amount of sugar to ½ cup. I used regular granulated sugar.  Originally, I was afraid to make a substitute for something healthier because sugar helps make up the structure of baked goods. I have since experimented with organic cane sugar and everything turned out just fine. Feel free to substitute an equal amount of Organic Cane sugar in place of the granulated sugar.
  

  Wet Ingredients

• Since real butter is out of the question, I’ve used Earth Balance buttery spread.  The addition of fat makes for a moist cornbread.  My old Betty Crocker cookbook warns against making a substitute with a  buttery spread, because many of them have added water in place of oil to reduce calories, making them unsuitable for baking. Well… I checked!  Earth Balance has 9 grams of fat per Tablespoon, which is the minimum fat allowable, according to Betty, to be considered as a substitute for real butter in baking. Yay!  that was easy. I had it on hand already!
• Traditional cornbread uses buttermilk to help develop the flavor. Combining almond milk and lemon juice, and waiting about a minute, will give you a thickened mixture that approximates buttermilk in taste and texture! 
• Eggs definitely don’t fit the definition of vegan or plant based.  Yet without them, the cornbread would normally be heavy and dense. Fortunately, a French singer, (No that’s not a typo. He really was a singer) named Joël Roessel, discovered that the liquid  that canned beans are packed in, called aquafaba, makes a fabulous egg substitute! Whipping the aquafaba, forces air into the mixture, and in this case,  gives the cornbread a light airy texture, as if we’d used actual eggs! 

How to Make the Cornbread

To Start:

• Heat the oven to 400 degrees
• grease an 8x 8 pan with a vegan buttery spread. 

Mix the Dry  Ingredients:

• Measure out the cornmeal in a medium sized bowl.
• Add the flour, making sure that you spoon the flour into the measuring cup. Make sure to not compact it. If the flour is compacted, you will end up with batter that is too thick. 
• Add the sugar, salt, and baking powder to the mixture and stir to combine well.