Cheesy Leek Cornbread

This is so much easier than normal bread. It's stuffed with cheese, crunchy pieces of bacon and buttery soft leeks that run all the way through giving it a marbled appearance.

20 minutes prep

80 minutes cook

Serves undefined

Hugh Woodward

Ingredients

1 packetstreaky bacon

130gfine yellow cornmeal

130gplain flour

50ggolden caster sugar

2 tspbaking powder

1/2 tspbicarbonate of soda

1 tspflaked sea salt

190gsour cream

120gbuttermilk

3 small eggs

60gmelted butter

150ggrated cheddar

40gfinely grated parmesan

It's the perfect thing to make as a side dish to elevate a humble soup to something more glorious, something more to shout about. All you need to do is mix the ingredients together in the classic wet/dry formula and you have a moist, moreish crispy edged cheesy stunner.

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Slice the bacon and, in a saucepan, render it so it's perfectly crispy. Sieve the fat and use this to brush the sides of the loaf tin.

Crack on trimming around 9 leeks to fit the confines of your loaf tin - you want the ends pressing up against the short sides of the tin.

Now, whisk together all the dry ingredients, then in a separate bowl all the wet ingredients and combine the two together to make a batter - it'll be quite loose and spongy, like cake batter,

Fold in the cheeses and the pieces of bacon.

Take a quarter of the mixture and spread it in the bottom of the loaf tin. Top with three of the leeks, then place another quarter of the batter on top, covering the leeks. Repeat with the remaining leeks, and then once more, finishing with a layer of the batter.

Bake uncovered for around 40 minutes to an hour, then cover and bake for a final 20 minutes or until it's completely cooked though.

Serve hot with more grated parmesan.