I was in a baking mood last weekend. A baking and sharing mood, actually. I made this almond cake and shared it with a good friend who just had her third baby. I also made these little buttermilk corn muffins, and I shared them with some neighbors who were moving a few blocks away. It seemed like a perfect packing-up-the-moving-truck kind of snack. Well, maybe not, but hey – I needed someone to share the muffins with.
To be perfectly honest, I just felt like baking and I happened to come up with two very good excuses to do so. I love passing on food to friends and family – it’s part of the joy of cooking.
Barb of VinoLuciStyle had a wonderful idea to create recipes from the RSVP section of Bon Appétit magazine and feature them in a blog post. After all, those recipes have no photos attached, and part of the fun of this is seeing how the finished dish turns out (and hopefully taking some fab photos!). Mardi of eat. live. travel. write. – you remember Mardi, right? She wrote this lovely post on macarons for me – posted her versions of the RSVP recipes earlier this week.
I love cornbread, so when I saw the recipe for mini buttermilk corn muffins in the RSVP section of the July issue, I immediately knew that this was the recipe I would make. And, thanks to my neighbors, I had the perfect excuse to make them.
The only real substitution I made was to use chives instead of dill in the muffins. I really am not a fan of dill. There. I said it. No dill for me.
The muffins were adorable, and tasty, too. Of course I kept a handful for our family – and if I’m going to be perfectly honest, I ate two myself. They were incredibly moist, with lovely bursts of sweetness from the corn kernels inside. Next time, to heck with the neighbors – I’ll keep the whole batch for myself.
Yield: 16 muffins
Recipe slightly adapted from Bon Appétit, July 2010 issue, who adapted it from a recipe from Chino Farms in Rancho Santa Fe, California. Because I don't like dill, I substituted fresh chives instead. I also used light sour cream instead of full-fat.
Nonstick vegetable oil spray
1/2 cup all purpose flour
3 tablespoons yellow cornmeal
3 tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon (generous) kosher salt
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup fresh corn kernels (cut from 1 ear of corn)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Coat 16 mini muffin cups with nonstick spray.
Whisk flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl. Whisk sour cream, buttermilk, and egg in another medium bowl. Whisk in melted butter. Stir in dry ingredients. Add corn kernels and chives; fold just to incorporate. Divide among prepared muffin cups, about 1 generous tablespoon per cup.
Bake mini muffins until puffed and brown around edges, 13 to 15 minutes (tops will not brown). Cool slightly. Remove muffins from pan. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.
