This is Northern United States style sweet cornbread, as opposed to the way they cook cornmeal in the South with boiling water. Some recipes will omit the sugar, which is probably a good idea. The weights are a recent conversion from the original recipe.
Mix the above dry ingredients well. The sugar could also be mixed into the following.
Mix the above well.
Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Do not overmix! Streaks of unmixed dry ingredients are okay.
Let the batter sit for 15 minutes or so; this was probably a good time to preheat the oven to 420F. Pre-warming the cast-iron muffin pan is also a good idea, after seasoning it with clarified butter. Scoop batter into the muffin pan using a 1/4c measuring spoon and spatula; the batter should not reach to the top of the muffin pan. Adjustments may be required if you do not have a cast-iron muffin pan from probably the 1930s.
Top rack cook for 15 minutes, check the cornbread with a toothpick. Buttermilk may take a bit longer to cook than 2% reduced fat milk. Maybe turn on the broiler and watch and rotate the pan to brown the tops of the muffins near the end. A toothpick should come out clean.
Vegetable oil might be used, though you may want to find a vegetable oil that can take 420F and also season a cast-iron pan; clarified butter is easier here for me, though it does make the cornmeal a bit oily.
Replace the milk with buttermilk and use 10% whole wheat flour to increase the savory and earthy tones. Yogurt might be used with milk to some percentage. The brown sugar could be left out, or replaced with dark brown sugar or grade B maple syrup.
On the plus side, this cornbread recipe did result eventually in the Food::Ratio Perl module.