A soft, custard-like spoonbread enriched with cooked grits or hominy, egg, and milk — baked until it must be served with a spoon. Named for Awendaw, a Gullah community, it is cornbread made tender as pudding.
Awendaw is named for a Gullah Geechee place, and the dish belongs to that Lowcountry community's table — a refinement of everyday cornbread into something soft enough for the young, the old, and the company alike. It is corn, the daily grain, treated with care and named for home.
Built on stone-ground corn and hominy, awendaw provides slow-digesting complex carbohydrates and, when nixtamalized (hominy), niacin and calcium made bioavailable by the lime treatment — the same ancestral corn-processing wisdom that prevented pellagra. The egg and milk add complete protein and calcium, making this a gentle, nourishing dish easy on the digestion.
Stir cooked grits or hominy into a batter of cornmeal, beaten eggs, milk, and a little butter, and bake at 350°F in a buttered dish until puffed and just set — soft enough to scoop with a spoon, never sliceable. The cooked grits are what make it tender and custardy.
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