Grainy Corn Bread Muffins

This week was a chili week, so we made some corn bread muffins to accompany it.  I had bought some Bob's Red Mill stone-ground corn meal because I like his products and the whole grain thing is always appealing. The first batch of corn bread we made with it was very... crunchy. I love texture, but this was just so crunchy. It reminded me of when I went on a canoe trip and someone accidentally kicked a foot's worth of sand into the mac n cheese.  Still delicious, but just oddly crunchy (although corn meal does not pose a threat to tooth enamel).

The second time around, I thought I'd soak the corn meal a bit to soften it up.  It worked great! It still offered the grainy goodness with a more gentle, toned-down crunch.  Plus the wheat flour adds some beautiful swirls of light brown and bright yellow.  The muffins are pretty moist as far as cornbread goes.  Oh, Steve suggests subbing out the sugar for honey. I bet that would be pretty tasty!

Before I go into the recipe, I will admit I am not a southerner.  I also did not feed these to my southern friend, mostly because I nommed them all down myself and didn't want to share.  I am aware that cornbread is a pretty controversial blog topic. While perusing other recipes, I read some very vitriolic reviews of people who vehemently believed sugar has no place in cornbread.  I think the quote was something like "Sugar has, never has had, and never will have a role in a cornbread recipe."  If you are of this opinion, then please stop reading and go follow some other recipe.

so full of texture!

First, I created a buttermilk substitute. If you have buttermilk, proceed to the next paragraph.  To do this, pour

• 1 cup milk (fatty is nice)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

in a medium container and let it sit for a few (5ish) minutes. You should see some nice chunkies form.  

Then, I soaked the cornmeal in the buttermilk by adding

• 1 cup Bob's Red Mill stone ground (coarse) cornmeal

and just let it sit for ten or twenty minutes. In the meanwhile, heat the oven to 375 degrees F and prepare your muffin pan.  The recipe I loosely followed actually made corn bread (not muffins), so a 8x8 inch pan or a nice cast iron skillet would work great! If you use a skillet, try to make sure the surface area is about the same. If you have a 9 inch (in diameter) skillet, that's just about perfect!

In a (completely different) pan, melt 

• 1/2 cup (one stick) butter

at a nice low n slow temperature.  The browning process should add some nice flavors to the butter. Other reviewers said this technique works great for other baked goods (such as muffins), so it may be worth a try!  After 10 minutes, turn the heat off and stir in

• 2/3 cup white sugar

Once the sugar has been dissolved, beat in 

• 2 eggs

until the mixture is smooth and consistent.  In a separate bowl, whisk together

• 1 cup wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda

Next, combine everything and mix as little as possible! Just a dozen nice stirs to combine everything. Don't worry if it's not perfectly uniform or if there are little clumps. I think the idea is you don't want to mess up the gluten fibers by overstirring.  Finally, move the batter to the muffin pan (or skillet or pan or whatever cooking container you're using) and place it in the oven.  If you are making muffins, take them out after 15-20 minutes.  If you are making bread, then you will need to keep it in another 20 minutes or so.  When a toothpick comes out clean, you know that you're done. 

If you are the type of person to do this, go ahead and throw some goodies in the batter! Jalapenos, maybe some corn kernels. Go nuts!