Corn Pone

Etta Royston's Corn Pone (unleavened corn bread)

Ingredients:
Two cups (500 ml) corn meal
(My grandmother always used white
corn meal but yellow will do fine.)
Two tablespoons (30 ml) flour
Three tablespoons (50 ml) fat
(I prefer peanut or corn oil; bacon fat is traditional)
One half teaspoon (2.5 ml) salt and pinch of sugar
Three tablespoons (50 ml) buttermilk (optional)
Enough boiling water to make a stiff dough - about one and one half cups (350 ml)

Method:
Preheat oven to 400F (200C).
Mix the above ingredients, then add enough boiling water to mix into a stiff dough.  Make into pones with
your hands, making prints of your fingers on top.  My grandfather used to say that there was no need to
butter the pones as the imprint of my grandmother's hands was all the seasoning he needed.  Nevertheless,
my Aunt Lillian, his daughter, told me that "he always absolutely slathered them with butter." Go figure.
Lillian also told me the buttermilk was "to make them tender".  I don't know if this works but I do know that
real buttermilk is no longer available in US grocery stores.   What is labeled as buttermilk is a dairy chemist's
concoction that is purported to resemble buttermilk in some way so in this recipe it's "optional".
Bake on a greased pan until the tops are slightly browned which should take about thirty-five minutes.