Cornbread Muffin

Maize is an ingredient that puzzles in a funny way. While I will eat it without any problem, when it comes to cooking, aside from corn cob, well, I just draw blank. It is not that I don’t know what to do with it; rather, just boiling/broiling it is great. However, in winter, fresh corn is not available and, as a result, we look for alternatives such as canned, frozen or, the topic of this post, ground – as in cornmeal.

But what can I do with cornmeal? My first thought was… masa! In fact, I was thinking of tamal, the maize dought dish. But, wrapping them would have a time consuming task. Tamal de olla (the pot version of tamal) was option #2. But no, I wanted something simple; something like cornbread.

Now, I will have to say, it was a pain to prepare this dish. No, the dish itself was simple. Rather, was the research I had to do. While browsing different sites, the ingredients and methods are so different I was not sure which one I should follow. Among other things that could be different include:

• White cornmeal or yellow cornmeal
• Slightly sweet or savoury
• Cornmeal only or mix of cornmeal and flour
• Buttermilk or no buttermilk
• Additional corn or just plain cornmeal
• Dutch oven, cast-iron vessel or tray

After racking my head with all these, I decided to go for these ingredients:

• 1.5 cup of cornmeal. I am not sure what type was the one I had but I could say yellow it was
• 3/4 cup of flour. The flour I had is the Nutriblend mix
• 1 cup of buttermilk
• 2 eggs (room temperature!)
• 1 can of creamed corn
• 2 tablespoon of melted butter
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 2 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
• Honey (optional)

For this recipe, I strated by pre-heating the oven at 375F. Then, in a large bowl, I mixed the cornmeal, flour, salt, sugar, baking powder and baking soda together. In another bowl, I mixed the buttermilk, eggs and creamed corn. Then, add the dry ingredients to the buttermilk mix and stir to combine. Here, I added the optional honey. How much? As much as you want! In my case, about a tablespoon.

Then, in a muffin tray, I put the muffin liners and add enough batter. It should yield about 12. Then bake the mix in the oven for 20 minutes.

I let it rest for a couple of minutes before removing them. And here we have it!

In the background, a leafy greens salad. Of course, if this is the meal, the next question would be… Where is the protein?! Well, I wanted to try making poached eggs and this is the result.

Actually, I will call it a failure as the egg white partially “dissolved” in the water. I think that was because the egg was not as fresh as possible. I guess I will have to try again next time…

But, back to the cornbread muffin, how does it taste? It was slightly sweet and, probably due to the mix of flour and cornmeal, it was not too dry. And I like it! For next time, however, I will make these changes:

1) No muffin liner. I think I will pour the mix straight to the tray instead (of course, will add some oil/butter first).
2) I might consider using frozen corn rather than creamed/canned.
3) If not using the muffin tray, most probably will go with the dutch oven. In a previous attempt (without flour), I did it that way and it was quite interesting, as it develops a crust. This is partially due to the fact I added some fat in the dutch oven while I was pre-heating the oven.

And yes, that means I will certailny try this again!

Tagged under: Home Cooking