I’ve been making my own bread for about 6 months now, enough so that it is becoming ‘old-hat’.  But today I made two loaves AND tried a new recipe:  Sweet Onion Upside Down Cornbread.

The recipe I saw on the Internet was a scratch recipe, and called for Sweet Vidalia onions, plus frozen broccoli, cottage cheese, and other stuff, along with flour, corn meal, baking soda blah blah blah….    Whatever!   I did it my way.

Start by preheating the oven to 400F.

In the larger cast iron skillet (I think it’s a #10), I browned up a 1 lb package of sweet Italian sausage, and set it aside to drain some of the fat.

Into that same cast iron skillet I added about 3 or 4 TBsp of butter and let that get all melty and sizzly while I sliced the onions, trying to keep the rings aligned.  I laid the onion slices into what I thought was a pretty pattern (circle in the center, and arranged half-circles around the edge).

While those were browning I mixed up 2 boxes of Jiffy corn muffin mix per box instructions, let it rest a few minutes, and then measure in 1 cup of the ground up cooked sausage and stirred that in and made it all evenly blended, poured in gently on top of my fancy onion ring pattern, and put it into the oven for 18 minutes, checked for browning and let it go another 3:30.   I let it set in the pan about 5 minutes, ran a knife around the edge, and flipped it onto the cutting board as my largest charger seemed too small.

Hoe Leash IT!!!   Yes, I already ate that first piece, and eating a 2nd piece.  This is absolutely a company-come-to-dinner kind of cornbread.  Easy to make, plates well, looks fabulous … who wouldn’t serve it for company?

Oh, and the extra cooked-up sausage?  Well…. that was lunch!  🙂