Corn Muffins

I made corn muffins this afternoon. Haven't had them in ages. They're so good!

I use an altered version of a recipe I used to have in The New Laurel's Kitchen Cookbook. That recipe called for honey, but I don't like honey and it doesn't like me (upsets my stomach), so I never buy it. I just use sugar. The recipe may also call for wheat germ (I don't remember now and the book didn't make it to Ireland with us). I don't use wheat germ and have no idea whether one can even buy that here, so if that was part of the recipe, I would have just used extra cornmeal or flour.

Usually when I would make these in the past, I would end up with batter that was far too wet and runny and then I'd have to add more dry ingredients. I remembered this time, so altered things from the start, cutting down on the amount of milk by 3/4 cup and adding an extra 1/4 cup of flour. In the original recipe, there was a range given for eggs and oil/melted butter. I use the lower end of that range.

Here's my version:
Stir together the following dry ingredients:
--2 cups coarse ground maize/corn meal
--3/4 cup wholemeal/whole wheat flour (the original recipe may have called for whole wheat pastry flour, which I've never seen here, but even when I was in the US, I just used regular whole wheat flour)
--1 teaspoon each salt and baking powder
--1/2 teaspoon bread soda/baking soda
--1-3 tablespoons of sugar (I used 2)

In a separate container, mix together
--1 1/4 c buttermilk or soured milk
--1 egg
--1 tablespoon oil or melted butter

Add wet ingredients to dry and stir just until batter is moistened and still lumpy. Here is where I can evaluate--if it's too dry, I can add another egg or a splash of milk. If too wet, I throw in a tad more flour. Today it was perfect.

Spoon into lined or greased muffin tins and bake at 220C in a fan oven or 425F for 20-25 minutes.

I have always loved hot corn bread with butter--it was nice to have that again. I threw together a quick veggie chilli/chili to go with the muffins by stirring around a chopped onion, chopped yellow bell pepper, a few cloves of garlic(chopped) in some olive oil. When the onion was translucent, I tossed in some oregano, parsley, coriander leaf, ground coriander, and cumin and stirred everything around for another minute or so. Then I added a can of chopped tomatoes in juice, a can of kidney beans (drained), and the rest of a container of tomato puree (tomato paste) that I had left from making last night's pizza. I let that all simmer, then ladled it out and added some cheddar cheese and grated some hot chilli mixture on top. Yum!

 Tonight we change the clocks back, so I will have an extra hour available to me to do whatever it is I am doing at 2 a.m. Winter time, here we come!!! Yippee!

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