Is Corn Bread Just Savory Cake?

Jake and I decided to use the month of January as a reset (like everyone else) and...not eat dessert. In the post-Christmas haze that was a three day sugar headache it sounded like a GREAT idea. We started off so strong, but in the past week I've been struggling - partially because dessert is my favorite meal of the day but mostly because I miss baking. I've been trying breads, but sweet baked goods are really what I like to do. If I make a bunch of cookies, we will eat a bunch of cookies, and that kind of defeats the whole purpose.

Highly recommend making this alone.

This past Sunday I decided to take a look through the savory section of Dessert Person and pick out something that would fill the void. I landed on the Loaded Corn Bread recipe. Is it healthy? No. But there's barely any sugar in it so it checks the boxes! Instead of sugar, it has a combination of corn, jalapeño, bacon, scallions, and lots of butter.

Taking a bath in butter.

The first step was to cook down the corn, bacon, and aromatics with all that butter in a skillet. Honestly, this alone was delicious and I would eat it as is. I ate a fair amount straight out of the skillet while I was making it. This mixture gets added to a corn meal batter and is baked straight in the skillet, with another huge chunk of butter.

"Loaded" might be an understatement.

From here on out, I think this cornbread will be one of my go-to's for any sort of potluck, picnic, family gathering, etc. It's extremely delicious. Something I didn't expect is that it turned out light and airy, almost cake like. If I were to name something a savory cake, this would be it. It feels as special as a dessert and has made our no dessert goal this month just a little bit easier.

Forever referring to corn bread as cake.