Corniest Corn Muffins

These are the ever fabulous Dorie Greenspan's corn muffins. You can find the recipe in her book Baking From My Home to Yours or on her wonderful blog, which I'd highly recommend reading. They are delicious and a savory complement for just about any soup you can dream up. I'm serving them tonight with a mexican inspired bean soup with tomatoes and chiles (recipe to come later this week).

I've made a couple of small additions to the original recipe that I feel give the muffins just a bit more flavor. The chile powder and fresh thyme add another layer of depth. The nutmeg is important too, just a hint to round everything out. Also, I don't like my corn muffins too sweet so I reduced the sugar a bit. Feel free to substitute honey here. The floral quality of the honey would go very well with the corn.

This is a nice alternative to my usual 'go to' cornbread recipe and I feel the corn texture and flavor is a bit more pronounced. I think I could practically make a meal out of these alone with just lots of good salted butter but I will restrain myself to just one muffin for now.

Do try these, I promise you'll be glad you did. It's so easy to whip up a batch of homemade savory muffins for dinner and it just adds that extra special touch to what might otherwise be a simple weeknight meal.

Enjoy!

Dorie's Corniest Corn Muffins:

Yields 12 muffins

1 cup brown rice flour

1 cup cornmeal (preferably stone ground, medium coarse)

1/4 cup sugar

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp thyme, finely chopped

pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 tsp mild chile powder (I used a smoked pasilla chile powder)

1 cup low-fat buttermilk

3 TB unsalted butter, melted and cooled

3 TB canola oil

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

1 cup corn kernels (if using frozen, do not defrost)

1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray a 12 cup muffin tin with nonstick spray. Set the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

2) In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients, including nutmeg, thyme, and chile powder. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients and eggs. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and when mostly incorporated, stir in the corn kernels.

3) Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups. Bake for 15-18 minutes until the tops are set and sides are just golden brown. Cool in muffin pan for 10 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. Serve with salted butter.