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This Gluten-Free Vegan Cornbread is fluffy and light with an amazing texture from the cornmeal! It’s perfect served with soup or chili, served as a side or snack, or just topped with a little bit of butter or spread. This post is sponsored by Bob’s Red Mill.
I’ve been wanting to make a gluten-free and vegan cornbread forever it seems like. The recipes haven’t ever turned out quite right – always too dense, or too cakey, or not a good enough texture or flavor. Which is why none of them have ever made it onto this site.
UNTIL NOW. Because you guys, I finally nailed it. Right in time for the Superbowl too…so you can have a delicious side to your steaming bowl of chili. Which one are you making – my classic best chili? My paleo chili? Or my white bean chili?! I’ll be making the white bean chili, and it is gonna be perfection when paired with this fluffy, delicious cornbread.
It’s pretty dang easy to make too. Just whisk together the dry ingredients, whisk together the wet ingredients, stir it all together, and your batter is done. Just pour it into the pan, or into a muffin tin if you’d prefer, bake, and voila – gluten-free vegan cornbread.
You really don’t even have to wait for it to cool before digging in, because cornbread is always better when it’s steamy and warm. Swoooon. Just make sure you’ve got the butter (or ghee, or vegan butter 😊) on deck and ready to spread!
The BEST Gluten Free + Vegan Cornbread!
We’ll have a quick chat about how to make the cornbread, what goes into it and why and whatnot, and then onto the recipe! Since most great cornbread starts with buttermilk, we make our OWN dairy-free buttermilk here. You’ll simply stir together a cup of dairy-free milk + a tablespoon of vinegar and let it curdle a bit. It’s also great to make your flax eggs right at the beginning, so they’ve got time to gel.
THEN, mix up all those dry ingredients. I used blanched almond flour and tapioca flour, both from Bob’s Red Mill – the blanched almond flour helps give light flavor and texture while the tapioca flour makes it super fluffy. Of course, can’t have cornbread without cornmeal.
I use Bob’s Organic Medium Grind Cornmeal here too, which is the true star of the show. It adds such a nice bite with some grit in the texture and a sweet corn flavor. There’s also baking soda, baking powder, salt, and coconut sugar.
For the wet ingredients, we’ve just got melted coconut oil, and the buttermilk we made earlier, along with the flax eggs. BTW – those little brown flecks you might see in the photos of the cornbread? Those are just from the flax meal.
You’ll whisk everything together until a thick, smooth batter comes together. Then, bake until golden. I seriously couldn’t keep my hands off of this gluten-free and vegan cornbread as soon as it came out of the oven…it just smelled so scrumptious. I spread on a little bit of ghee while the cornbread was still warm and it was glorious. 🙌
If you’re a cornbread kinda person, you’ve got to try this recipe! I’d surely say it compares to any cornbread I’ve ever had, and it’s perfect served with chili…and probably anytime I’m having soup or chili in the future. This one’s a keeper! Enjoy :)
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Remember to #bakerita if you try the recipe!
Gluten Free + Vegan Cornbread
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar, can also use lemon juice
- 1 cup non-dairy milk of choice, I used unsweetened almond
- 1½ cups 144g blanched almond flour
- ½ cup 55g tapioca flour
- 1 cup 172g Bob’s Red Mill Organic Medium Grind Cornmeal
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1¼ teaspoons sea salt
- ¼ cup coconut sugar
- ⅓ cup coconut oil, melted and cooled slightly (you could sub with avocado oil too)
- 2 flax eggs, 2 tablespoons flax meal + 5 tablespoons water, whisk together and let set for 5 minutes
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F. Line an 8x8” square baking pan with parchment paper and grease with coconut oil. Set aside.
- Combine the non-dairy milk and white vinegar in a bowl to let the milk curdle a bit into buttermilk. Also make the flax eggs at this point, to give them time to gel.
- Meanwhile, whisk the almond flour, tapioca flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl, making sure to get all the clumps out.
- Add the coconut sugar, melted coconut oil, and flax eggs to the milk and vinegar mixture and whisk together until smooth. Whisk the wet mixture into the dry ingredients until smooth and combined.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with just a few crumbs attached, about 22-24 minutes.
- Let cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then remove from the pan and place on a wire rack to let it finish cooling completely. You can also serve warm, if desired. In fact, I recommend trying a piece warm. Enjoy!
I started making this and realized I am out of flax AND regular eggs. I did some research and subbed 6 tbsp almond butter for the egg and let me just say… I think I may be on to something. The nuttiness is nice in this recipe. Love this and will try again with flax eggs later! Thank you Bakerita!
Ooooh how interesting!! I’m so glad you figured it out and made it work – will need to try that. Thanks so much for the feedback, Anna Kate!
I love these kind of comments! Who knew…..almond butter….I’m going to try it also!!
Me too!! People are so creative :) hope it works well for you too!
Delicious and perfect for our Thanksgiving Stuffing. Thanks
So glad to hear it was a hit. Thanks for the feedback, Dana!
I haven’t made this yet but I’m excited to try it. There are both vegans and GF folks in the community I dine with. One question: you mention maple syrup in the commentary but it sin’t in the recipe. Did you replace it with coconut sugar? Or was it in addition?
Hi Sylvan – my mistake! I ended up replacing it with coconut sugar :) hope you love the recipe!
I’ve been baking vegan for 10 years and GF for 7 years and this is hands down the best cornbread recipe I’ve come across. No other recipe or packaged mix compares! Thanks to the almond flour, it was able to get a lovely shade of brown on the bottom but still remain light and moist. This is a keeper recipe that will stay in our rotation!
So glad you’re loving it, Sadie! I tried many gluten-free vegan cornbread recipes as well and none made me happy, so that’s how this one came to be :D glad you agree that it’s awesome!!! Thanks for the feedback.
LOVED this recipe. I paired it with butternut squash quinoa chili. Delicious! I followed it to a T, however it came out super crumbly. Any suggestions?
Hi Sarah, sorry you had issues with it crumbling! Cornbread is naturally a little crumbly, but overbaking even slightly can pull out extra moisture that makes it extra crumbly, so make sure you’re not overbaking this one, and be careful not to overmeasure the flour, which can also dry out the cornbread.
Hi! Currently meal-prepping for the postpartum period and plan to make your white bean chili to freeze! Wondering how well this would hold up in the freezer to go alongside it..? Thank you!
Hi Amelia, it should freeze very well in an airtight container :)
My family adores cornbread and I always have to skip it…have been wanting to try this recipe for a long time and so glad I did!!! We all agreed this was the best cornbread we’ve ever had. Made it this afternoon for chili tonight and half the pan was gone by the time we sat down for dinner…THAT GOOD!!! I’ve already texted it to my family and friends as “you must make this!”
Oh my goodness this is such a compliment, Chelsea!! Thank you so much for the feedback. I’m so happy and grateful you and your family enjoyed it and that the recipe allows you to enjoy cornbread again :D
Do you think I could sub arrowroot starch for the tapioca flour?? Thanks!
Hi Julie – yes! Those two are interchangeable in almost all recipes :)
My go-to cornbread recipe! I’ve made it a handful of times and it always comes out perfect. Fluffy and delicious, no one believes that it’s gluten-free! Thank you so much!
So thrilled it’s a hit!! Thanks so much for the feedback, Kat!
Hello! New to your site. First, thank you for this recipe. Per the comments, it sounds like it’s delicious but I feel like I made a misstep somewhere. My cornbread was super super moist. I’m thinking i did not measure out the coconut oil properly as I’ve never baked with this before. So when measuring 1/3 should it have been measured solid or melted? I hope that makes sense. Also, my turned out very dark. My oven heats fine and I made sure to check it at 4 min less the recommended time. Why could this be? Also, it wasn’t fluffy. I used Bobs cornmeal amd tapioca flour but didn’t use his almond flour. Is this why mine turned out dark?
Hi Nerra, I always measure coconut oil by weight, but I think it’s easier to overmeasure if you measure while it’s solid. If you almond flour was more of an almond meal that’s not as fine and not blanched, that could contribute to a lot of the issues you mentioned. However, without being in the kitchen with you, it’s hard for me to know exactly what went wrong!