Cornbread anyone?

Thanksgiving! This has been a hit and miss celebration during our time in the US.  Twice Dom has been away, and last year I got a half turkey delivered so I didn't have to cook one. It ended up being dry and tasteless but since I was in my deranged post-partum state I can barely remember it. This year we are going to a pot-luck where I was encouraged to bring precisely nothing. Nothing? I thought this holiday was all about cooking and sharing?  There's a poster ad here for Newcastle Brown Ale which has a picture of a pint with the words, 'Making British food palatable since 1927'. The pot-luckers are obviously taking no chances with me.  I protested, and was given the task of producing some cornbread muffins. Knowing Dom likes bread sauce, I also suggested I bring some of that, in the name of cross-cultural diversity. We haven't made the bread sauce yet but yesterday I cooked up three batches of cornbread muffins, the first without wheat so as to be gluten free. These first ones turned out a little flat and fairly tasteless so I bought a mix, thinking if I baked them from a that, then I'd know how they should look and could work from there. Were they were meant to be all puffy with overhang like the blueberry muffins in Starbucks? Unfortunately I forgot the egg so the next dozen were just as flat and heavy.  Finally I made the last batch of cornbread just as the recipe suggested.  Certainly not light and fluffy.  Dom thinks they'd be better hot, with Marmite. Lucky we are not in charge of the turkey!