Vivian's Corn Bread

The Southern section of the New York Times Heritage Cookbook has no less than twelve recipes for cornbread, so I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to serve it at Thanksgiving. My son, in the sharing spirit of the day, brought excellent pumpkin biscuits that I passed with the soup, so many guests gave the corn bread a pass.
Actually, they were wise. This corn bread is way too dry. If you don't have time to hunt through all the millions of recipes on line, you can easily rescue this one from dryness by following my instructions, which doubles the milk. That would make it much better. Other than that, it's an okay recipe, not dramatically different from the recipe I used to make in The Joy of Cooking.

Vivian's Corn Bread

2 cups yellow corn meal
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons shortening or melted butter

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2 Sift together the corn meal, flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Stir in the eggs, salt, sugar, milk and shortening or butter. Pour into greased nine-inch square pan.
3. Bake twenty to twenty-five minutes or until bread is firm in the center. Makes six servings.