We needed a side dish to go with our 5 color chili, so Jennie had the brilliant idea to make corn muffins. We figured it’d be easy enough, so we didn’t do much planning until we found ourselves riding in the car on our way to the grocery store.
“Can we add some actual corn?” I said to Jennie.
“Sure,” she consented.
“And maybe some red pepper?”
“I love that.” Jennie said.
“And I think we should add fennel.” I mused.
“Fennel? What about lavender?” Jennie offered.
“Lets do a half batch of each!” We decided.
And so, once again, we found ourselves standing in the spice aisle of Ralph’s scouring their selection for something new and exciting. In the end, we came up with a recipe that satisfied our Cucina Fresca goal for baked goods AND for trying new spices.
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 12-17 minutes
Servings: 15 muffins
Ingredients:
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 medium eggs (or 2 large)
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup milk
Variation 1:
2 tsp Herbes de Provence with Lavender
Variation 2:
2 tsp crushed fennel seed
6 oz frozen corn
1 red pepper, finely chopped
Directions:
1. Mix cornmeal, flour, salt, sugar and baking powder in large bowl.
2. Mix in eggs, milk and oil.
3. Add herbs of your choice and mix well.
4. Mix in frozen corn and chopped red pepper, if preparing fennel muffins with corn.
5. Fill 12 – 15 lined muffin cups. Fill slightly more than halfway for lavender herbed muffins, or 3/4 full for the fennel herbed muffins with corn and red peppers.
6. Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees.
First, Jennie adapted the recipe for our corn muffin base from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook.
Then we hunted through the baking cupboard for ingredients.
And we mixed up the batter!
We split the batter into two batches. To the first, we added 1 teaspoons of Herbes de Provence. (Add 2 teaspoons if you’re making a full batch)
So happy to have this in our cupboard, now!
To the second half, we added half of a red pepper, finely chopped. And about 4 oz of frozen corn (one full pepper and 8oz corn for a full batch)
We also added a teaspoon of crushed fennel seed to this batch. (2 tsp for a full batch)
Voila!
We used muffin liners, because we’re too lazy to grease the pan.
Serve with some yummy chili!
[addtoany] Yum