Vegan Cornbread (gluten-free)
This sweet, cake-like vegan cornbread is also gluten-free, dairy-free and 100% whole grain and doesn’t contain any specialty ingredients.
I’m thrilled to be working with Bob’s Red Mill today to bring you this gluten-free and vegan cornbread! After every trip to the US, I return with my suitcases stuffed with their flour, and I even had my friend Rose send me another 20 pounds after I had run out of my stash.
I brought the cornmeal I used in this recipe back with me because I had started to notice that most of the German brands I had been buying weren’t 100% whole grain. It’s no different in the US, so make sure your cornmeal is labeled as whole grain or stone ground. If it says steel-milled, some or all of the hull and germ have been removed; then you might as well be using all-purpose flour.
This healthier cornbread has, in my opinion, the perfect ratio of cornmeal to flour. I don’t like my cornbread too coarse, but I still want to taste the corn. It’s moist, not at all dry, slightly dense (but in a great way!), and sweet. And there’s vanilla! This Southern girl is all about northern-style cake-like cornbread.
This vegan cornbread is great in bread form or as muffins. The only thing to note is that if you choose to make it into bread, you need to let it sit for 2-3 hours, or it’ll be extremely difficult to cut and hold. It’s so fluffy when it comes out of the oven, and due to the lack of gluten, it’s just hard to handle. The muffins can be eaten straight from the oven. If you want to make this for Thanksgiving, I recommend preparing it on Wednesday night or Thursday morning so that it remains as fresh as possible.
I used this gluten-free medium ground cornmeal, and though I haven’t tried it, I’m assuming it’d come out well with finely or coarsely ground cornmeal. I did try whole spelt in place of oat flour, and the muffins sank in the middle and didn’t taste nearly as good as the oat flour version. So stick with oat flour! I also tried store-bought buttermilk in place of the homemade dairy-free buttermilk, and that worked perfectly.
When I post a vegan recipe, it’s usually coincidentally vegan, meaning that it doesn’t involve eggs, and I simply use coconut oil instead of butter. Since I’ve received a few nice comments recently thanking me for posting vegan recipes, I thought I’d make a more concerted effort to create vegan recipes. So here we have some vegan cornbread!
If you’re vegan or making this for a vegan friend, you’ll need to skip the honey and butter I used to dress up my cornbread. Use maple syrup instead! Or just eat it plain like I do. :) And if you’re not vegan or gluten-free, make this anyway! It’s the best cornbread I’ve ever had, and it really doesn’t taste like it’s been made healthier.
For another delicious cornbread dish perfect for Thanksgiving, try this Southern Cornbread Dressing! And for sugar-free, check out this Keto Cornbread.
I was compensated by Bob’s Red Mill for the development of this recipe but, as always, all opinions expressed in this post are my own.
Vegan Cornbread (gluten-free)
Ingredients
Wet ingredients:
- 1 cup (240 ml) milk of choice, room temperature or warm (this is important so that the coconut oil doesn't harden once added)
- 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
- 1/3 cup (75 grams) coconut oil melted
- 1/2 cup (100 grams) raw sugar or granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Dry ingredients:
- 2/3 cup (88 grams) medium grind gluten-free cornmeal
- 1 1/3 cup (123 grams) oat flour if you're gluten-free, use GF oat flour
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 °F (175 °C) and line a muffin pan with 12 muffin liners or line an 8″ x 8″ pan with a piece of parchment paper.
- Pour the milk in a large mixing bowl, add the apple cider vinegar, and give it a few stirs. Let sit for 5 minutes while preparing the dry ingredients.1 cup (240 ml) milk, 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
- In a medium mixing bowl, stir together all the dry ingredients. Set aside.2/3 cup (88 grams) medium grind gluten-free cornmeal, 1 1/3 cup (123 grams) oat flour, 3/4 teaspoon salt, 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- To the milk mixture, add the melted coconut oil, sugar and vanilla and stir until well combined.1/3 cup (75 grams) coconut oil, 1/2 cup (100 grams) raw sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- Add the dry mixture and stir just until combined.
- Pour into the prepared pan. Bake muffins for 12 minutes and bread for 20 minutes. A toothpick inserted in the middle should come out with a few moist crumbs but no wet batter.
- Let the muffins cool for 5 minutes in the pan and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely. The bread can be eaten immediately but will be very difficult to cut – it’s better to wait for 2-3 hours until it’s firmed up just a little.
- Store any leftovers in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Notes
- You can use store bought buttermilk in place of the milk + vinegar mixture for a dairy-containing, non-vegan version. To make the homemade dairy-free / vegan buttermilk, you can use soy milk, almond milk, etc. but I don’t recommend canned coconut milk. If you can have dairy, you can also use regular cow’s milk.
- I used refined coconut oil, which has no coconut taste. If you use unrefined, these may have a slight to mild coconut taste.
- If you don’t have oat flour, you can grind quick or rolled oats in a food processor or coffee grinder until it resembles flour.
- The nutrition information provided is calculated as a courtesy and is only an estimate. I am not a licensed nutritionist or dietitian. For the most accurate nutritional data, consult a professional or use your preferred calculator. This recipe yields 16 pieces of bread or 12 muffins.
I had to comment when I read your question of “What do you want to eat non-sweet cornbread for?” I have an answer for that. My family always loved the corny, buttery taste of cornbread made without any sweetener. Once could always add syrup to the top after it’s on your plate, but I would ask “Why?”. We added butter and sometimes more butter. You’d want that with soup or collards and black-eyes peas wouldn’t you?
I just came back from visiting some Southern states and had a lot of non-sweet cornbread. I guess it’s just not my thing! But like you said, you can always add some maple syrup or honey. I guess I have my sweet tooth to blame for the need for that. ;)
Awesome recipe! I just tried this today. I used almond milk and substituted brown rice flour as I had no oat flour on hand. The cornbread turned out absolutely perfect!
I’m so happy your subs worked out well and that you liked the muffins! Thanks a bunch for your feedback. :)
Do you know if it would work with quinoa flour brown rice flour or coconut flour?
I know it wouldn’t work with coconut flour, which isn’t interchangeable with and requires a ton more moisture than any other flour. I also don’t think quinoa flour or brown rice flour would work but I haven’t tried it so I can’t say for sure. Sorry about that!
Hi! Thanks for sharing this recipe. I’m excited to give it a try. Just wondering what the apple cider vinegar does.
:)
Hi there! It curdles the milk so that you have buttermilk. :) If you’re not dairy-free / vegan, you can use regular buttermilk in place of the milk + vinegar. I hope you’ll enjoy them!
Thank you!
No problem! Happy Thanksgiving. :)
Hi Erin,
I gave these a try the other day. The texture was kind of gritty/grainy – is that usual? I’ve never baked with cornmeal before. I used a fine-ground one because it was available in my local supermarket. I also used a gluten-free flour containing potato, rice, tapoica, buckwheat and corn. I’m just wondering what contributed to that particular texture.
Thank you! :)
Hi Sophie! Cornmeal can be kind of gritty / grainy but not if you use one that’s finely ground like you did. I’m pretty sure it was your gluten-free flour blend! Most rice flour recipes I’ve tried come out gritty. Oat flour is totally powdery and fine so when you make these muffins with that, they’re definitely not gritty. Oat flour isn’t interchangeable with really any other flours so I’m surprised that the muffins came out at all using a gluten-free flour mix. I definitely recommend trying with oat flour next time. :) Happy Thanksgiving!
Hi Erin,
Thanks so much for taking the time to reply, much appreciated! OK, I will have a think for next time.
Happy Thanksgiving to you too. :)
No problem. :) And thank you!
Excuse my comment it got cut in two. Have to make it so sweet. I can go along and taste it along the way. Can you tell me how the consistency of the batter should be? I can probably play with it as I go knowing that.
It’s quite thin, kind of like pancake batter. But pancake batters vary so much in their thinness so I don’t know if that’ll help very much! Sorry I can’t be more of a help here. I hope they’ll come out well. :)
Thank you so much for replying so quickly, I really appreciate it :) I’m also from Texas and love a sweet cornbread, but I guess I can play around and don’t necessairly
Hi love! Can’t wait to try this recipe, do you think I could use a liquid sweetener such as honey or maple syrup in place of dry sugar? Thank you Erin!
Hi there! The problem with that is that you’d have to reduce the milk but since I haven’t tried it, I don’t know by how much. And honey is sweeter than sugar so it sounds like you’d need to experiment a little. I did find this, which says, “In baking, replace 1 cup of white sugar with 3/4 cup of maple syrup and reduce by 3 tablespoons the other liquid content in the recipe for every cup of maple syrup used. Because maple syrup is brown and granulated sugar is white, this replacement will darken your baked goods and cause them to brown quicker.” So for 1/2 cup sugar, that’d be 6 tablespoons of maple syrup and you’d need to reduce the milk by 1.5 tablespoons. I don’t know if it’ll actually worked in this recipe, though! Good luck if you try it out. :)
I also live in Europe and measure with cups and grams / milliliters for every single recipe, so the measurements are correct (but I double-checked right now just to make sure!) The batter should indeed be extremely thin and when you take the muffins out of the oven, they’ll be very, very soft and even a little wet. They’ll also fall apart if you try to eat them immediately. I could definitely see how you were worried. Once the muffins cool, they firm up and are easier to handle. :) I’m happy that adding more flour worked for you! I guess it could have also been an ingredients issue, which is often an issue for me over here in Germany. What kind of cornmeal did you use? I used medium ground here and can imagine using a thicker ground one could cause a problem. I’m so happy that you enjoyed the muffins and thanks a bunch for your feedback!
In the top you say it is dairy free and yet there is milk in the ingredients. I can not eat dairy or gluten so I was excited about this recipe until I saw you have to add milk. Can you explain why you have described this cornbread as dairy free and yet there is milk in the ingredients?
thank you-
In the ingredients list, “milk of choice” is called for. That means you can use any milk you’d like, including soy milk, almond milk, or any other dairy-free milk. You mix it with vinegar to create dairy-free buttermilk. Hope that helps!
I used almond milk and when I added the vinegar the almond milk separated and it looked disgusting but I used it anyway and the muffins came out fine. The muffins were done according to the toothpick test but they weren’t browned at all.
That’s strange that it separated! But good to know that it worked out in the end. And you’re right – these muffins don’t brown at all. Still love ’em, though. ;) Thanks for your feedback!
I tried these and they were sooooo lovely and soft like cake! thank you so much for this! <3
Oh, yay! This is the first feedback I’ve gotten on this recipe so I was very happy to read your comment. Thanks so much and I’m happy you enjoyed them! :)
This cornbread recipe sounds great! Oat flour is such a versatile GF flour to use in baking. And the addition of vanilla? Wow. Ingenious!
I love how this recipe is a sweet cornbread – just like my mom’s recipe….I’ve forgotten, is sweet cornbread a Southern thing, and unsweetened cornbread more Northern? Being from Texas, I should know this – but I get this fact confused =)
Thanks, Mandie! And I didn’t know about the northern / southern thing until I started food blogging. I used to think that all cornbread was sweet, but it seems like only the northern type is. So this is definitely a northern variation, despite my Texan heritage. ;)
Huh. That is interesting. Both my parents are southerners, but I grew up on sweet cornbread. I can distinctly remember trying true southern cornbread for the first time when I was much younger. lol. What I was expecting and what I got were two completely different things. So I just mixed in the unsweetened cornbread with my bowl of soup. :-D
Thanks for clearing the northern vs southern cornbread dilemma.Now I won’t forget it.
Haha. I’m from Texas and also only ever knew the sweet kind. Dry, almost sugarless and crumbly is not my idea of yummy bread. ;)
Girl, you are a gluten-free master! These look absolutely amazing and I just adore Bob’s Red Mill products – thanks so much for sharing this recipe!
Oh, hey! :D And thanks so much. :)
I love these! Bob’s has the best products.
Agreed! And such a big variety. :)
Perfect! Soup season is upon us and these are a great to go along with it!
~Liz@HoosierHomemade
I bet they would! I’m not much of a soup eater but I’d be happy with just these muffins. :)
Now this is some beautiful cornbread! I love your honey and butter topping…that’s one of my favs too! :)
Thanks, Faith! :)
Hello do you think I could omit the honey to have a not sweet cornmeal?
There’s no honey in the cornbread but regular sugar. I think if you omit the sugar, the texture may be affected. But I think you could only add half the sugar! That would probably work and it wouldn’t be very sweet at all.
I love cornbread. I add flour & a tiny bit of sugar to mine. Have you used Bob’s 1-to-1 GF flour?
I haven’t! Have you? I’d love to try it!
This looks so wonderful! Sweet cornbread is right up my alley. Can’t wait to try!
I hope you do get a chance to try them out! :)
I looooove cornbread, Erin. I can’t wait to give these a try!
I hope you’ll enjoy it, Kris! :)
For us celiac gals who can’t eat oats, even GF oats, do you think Bob’s Red Mill GF All-Purpose Flour would work in place of the oat flour?
I haven’t tried it so I can’t say for sure. I thought that this recipe would be pretty forgiving so I tried making it with whole spelt and they sunk in the middle. Maybe quinoa flour would work? It’s just a guess, though!