Corn Muffins

I must apologize for how lazy I have been lately. It's not that I haven't done anything - I just haven't taken any pictures! So, I formally apologize, and I plan to make it up to you today by not only posting pictures, but also posting a fantastically yummy recipe!
We had some company over after church today, and since they were bringing the main course (two yummy homemade pizzas!) I made some side dishes: santa fe salad and corn bread muffins! The Santa Fe Salad is a blatant steal from Earl's. Their Santa Fe Chicken Salad is fantabulous and quite easy to make a reasonable facimile: greens, black beans, cajun seasoned chicken, avocado, feta, corn, dates, crispy tortilla strips, and lime vinaigrette. Today I didn't have the chicken or feta, so I cooked up the black beans with some cajun seasoning and lime juice instead. It was yum!
And for the corn bread muffins... well, that's something special :)
I've always adored corn bread, and perhaps that's because I never had it in my house. My mom was never a fan so the only time I got it was at restaurants, or at a friend's house. When I was working at the cafe through high school I made up their corn bread recipe one day and was delighted by a few important ingredients: a can of creamed corn, chili powder, and green chiles. I knew those were the things that made a dry, ordinary piece of corn bread moist and delectable! About three or four years ago I decided to make corn bread at home for the first time, and I opted to try a recipe I had as it was - no tweaking. And boy, was I disappointed. It was more dry than not, mealy, it didn't bind very well, and the flavor was less than enthusing. Round two I tweaked a few things and the flavor got better, but the texture was still a bit off. But by round three - I knew I had it. It was the perfect corn bread recipe. And I'm going to share it with you :) Oh, and I'm not going to reference the original recipe since a) after all this smack talk about it, it would hardly be fair to associate them with the unimpressive recipe, and b) all that 'tweaking' I did? The recipe isn't even recognizable anymore.
My Perfect Corn Bread Muffins:
2 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. cornmeal
2 1/2 tbsp sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp chili powder
a dash of chipotle powder
2 eggs
3/4 c. milk
1/4 c. oil
1 can creamed corn
1/2 c. shredded cheddar

Mix together first 7 ingredients in a large bowl - set aside. Whisk together eggs, milk and oil in a separate bowl. Add wet ingredients and corn to dry mix all at once - stir until just moistened. Fold in cheddar.
Divide between 18 greased muffin cups and bake at 400 for 15 minutes.
*Tip - don't start preheating the oven until after all the ingredients are combined, and then wait to divide between the muffin cups until the oven is ready - this will give you nice, fluffy muffins!

They look good, no? Oh, and if you're not into the whole tex-mex realm, try putting dill in, instead of the chili powder and chipotle, swap out the cheddar for gouda or gruyere, and serve them with chowder!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Muffin, Muffin?

Care to guess what I made last night? ;)

My husband has this thing... he needs muffins. It's as if he can't function during a normal workday without a muffin. We had bagels and pancake batter in the fridge, breakfast cookies in the freezer, and homemade granola bars on the counter, and he was complaining that there wasn't anything to eat for breakfast. *face palm*

And then I have this thing... I don't like making muffins. It's nothing against muffins as a whole, it's moreso about the recipes. When I worked at a cafe we had the best, fluffiest, most gorgeous muffins in the world, and it seems like I have yet to find a muffin recipe that compares (I hate flat muffins with a passion). So while I occassionally suck it up and make muffins for my beloved, far too often I let him buy them so I don't have to go through the disgrace of making sub-par muffins again. Right now, however, we are keeping funds tight. So when he asked if he could buy muffins last night, and I said no, I felt a little cold-hearted. It wasn't fair to him, who seems to have some sort of a dependancy on the stupid things, to have to go through withdrawl simply because I have high standards for muffin recipes. (As another aside, muffin mixes are banned in my house. Just gross.)

Anyway, I shopped for muffin recipes last night through Pinterest and Google, looking for pictures that recalled all of the wonderful mornings I had of making muffins with ginormous peaks on them. And you know what I found? I found a great start!

I saw a picture of Blueberry Muffins that looked peaked and pretty, and even though I didn't have any blueberries, I decided that I could make it work for chocolate chip muffins, too. I tweaked here and there, and was a little sceptical when I saw the batter, but when they came out of the oven... *sigh!* My heart fluttered! They were perfect! Now, chocolate chip muffins are actually some of my least favorite, but these? These were magnificent! Here's the actual recipe I used for a dozen chocolate chip muffins (and sorry there are no pictures, they got stacked over night so they aren't pretty anymore!)

The Best Chocolate Chip Muffins:
2 c. flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c. oil
2 eggs
1/2 c. buttermilk
1 c. sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c. chocolate chips

In a large bowl, mix together wet ingredients and sugar. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, salt and baking powder. Add flour mixture to wet ingredients and stir just until combined. Fold in chocolate chips.
Fill 12 greased or lined muffin cups 2/3 - 3/4 of the way full. Sprinkle with raw/coarse sugar. Bake at 375 for 20 - 25 minutes!

If you're looking for a bit more of a refined muffin, substitute almond extract for the vanilla and add in 1/3 c. sliced almonds!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Not-so-Lazy Day

Do you ever have those days where you feel like being productive inspite of the fact that you're sick? Have you ever felt like getting things accomplished, as if it were an act of defiance against your sucky-feelingness? That was today for me.
Truth be told, I had vowed to not get anything done today - I even warned my husband of this! I've got a sore throat, congested sinuses, and am just feeling crumby - but even though I had resolved to be totally unproductive, Pinterest got the better of me. I ended up making two types of blueberry muffins, Molasses Breakfast Cookies, Honey Mustard Sauce and Pizza Dough to freeze. Pretty lax afternoon, huh?
Matt and I are cutting back on our spending, which includes my grocery budget (okay, which is mostly my grocery budget... apparently I get a bit carried away when I find a new recipe to try!) and Matt's morning coffee-and-a-muffin habit, so I'm back to $300 a month for groceries (I can do it, it's just tough during Farmer's Market season!) and Matt's going to have to grab breakfast at home. To help in his endeavor, I decided to make him up some muffins that we can keep in the freezer and he can pull out the night before. Why two different types of blueberry muffins? Well, if you remember (which I doubt you will), last summer my grocery store had a ridiculously good sale on a whole lot of blueberries - I think it was something like two flats for $8. Anyway, I bought them up, washed them and froze them to use in baking through the winter. Well, I decided to use up the very last bit of it today, as well as 3 ripe bananas I had in my freezer, but the first recipe I found for Banana Blueberry Muffins only used one banana and half the blueberries I had, and the second recipe only used two bananas and the other half of the blueberries - so really, what was I to do? The 2-banana ones may be my favorite, but they're both quite yummy.

Once I had made the muffins I figured I needed some pizza dough in our freezer for those nights when I'm most prone to order in food - you know, the days where nothing goes right, I don't feel imaginative and just plain don't want to make supper. Considering I can throw BBQ sauce and cheese on these and bake them in 10 minutes basically takes away all of my excuses. This recipe is great, either rolled thin, or left with a puffy edge. The Honey Mustard Sauce was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I was deciding what to make my little boy and I for supper (Matt's working late) and I was debating between egg salad sandwiches and salmon sandwiches. I decided against the egg salad sandwiches because I didn't have any of the honey mustard sauce I normally use in my egg salad, so we had salmon, but then I decided it really was a pity I didn't have any honey mustard in the house, so I whipped it up anyway. The Molasses Breakfast Cookies are totally for me. Muffins are actually quite high in fat, even most of the 'healthy' varieties, and if you put too much fruit in a muffin it falls apart. A breakfast cookie is a yummy option that you can fill as full as you want of good-for-you things. I had an idea of what sort of a recipe I wanted, based off of a cookie that I used to make at the cafe I worked at through high school, but I couldn't find a very similar recipe. Finally, I gave up, and made my own! Note, these cookies are big, and they are filling. Seriously, this and a cup of milk = one good-for-you breakfast.

Molasses Breakfast Cookies: Makes 15 cookies
¾ c. vegetable oil
1 c. brown sugar
3 tbsp molasses
2 eggs
½ c. skim milk
½ c. whole wheat flour
¾ c. white flour
1 c. oat bran
¼ c. flax seeds
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ginger
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp cloves
2 c. oats
½ c. raisins
¼ c. snipped dates
¼ c. snipped dried apricots
Preheat oven to 375 degrees In a large bowl, stir together the oil, sugar, molasses, eggs and milk. Stir in the bran and let sit for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in a medium bowl mix together flours, flax seeds, oats, baking soda, salt and spices. Stir dry ingredients into oil mixture. Stir in fruit. Using a ¼ c. measure, divide batter into mounds on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes, or until firm on top.

So much for my lazy day!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)