Cornbread muffins

On Sunday we planned a lunch of soup. It was basically a beef-based stock with tomato and vegetables, including okra, that we had in the freezer. Ken mixed a small amount of another similar soup into it and hotted it up a bit with a spicy pepper paste. We thought that cornbread would be a great accompaniment.

You can see the bits of corn inside the muffins. Tasty!

The cornbread we make is US southern style, not the sweetened cornbread that I was familiar with up north. There is no sugar in this recipe. The only changes I made were to substitute plain yogurt for the buttermilk and to add corn kernels to the batter. I also baked it in a muffin tin instead of a pan.

Savory corn muffins

• 2 cups cornmeal
• 10 oz (300 g) canned or frozen corn kernels
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 tbsp melted butter (bacon fat would work great)
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 2 eggs, well beaten
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 425ºF (I used 210ºC, slightly cooler).

Put the cornmeal into a large bowl. If using canned or frozen corn kernels, cook them for about five minutes in the 1 cup of boiling water. Drain the cooking liquid into the cornmeal along with the melted butter. Stir well. If you have a stick blender, process half of the corn so its broken up, otherwise coarsely chop half with a knife or leave it all whole; your choice. Set the corn aside.

Stir the yogurt, cold water, beaten eggs, soda, and salt into the cornmeal mixture. Now add the broken and whole corn and beat in thoroughly. Pour the batter into buttered muffin tins. You can fill them pretty full. If there is batter left, save it for a second batch.

Bake in a preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes until a wooden skewer inserted into one of the muffins comes out clean. Cool and serve.

They're really good spread with butter!

A side note: I have a convection oven, which means that a fan blows inside the oven to maintain an even temperature. Whenever I make muffins, the convection fan tends to blow the soft batter to one side as it rises, making the muffins look lop-sided (you can kind of see the effect on the cut muffin in the photo). If I remember (which I didn't for this batch), I use the non-convection setting on the oven so the fan doesn't blow and the muffins come out looking symmetrical.