Corn Muffins - Christmas 2011

Although I've made a sweet version of corn muffins before, I wanted this to complement the pork and chicken - kind of like a bread to go with the main meal. It sounded like a good plan and the pictures in my Le Cordon Bleu muffin cookbook looked really good too. I especially liked the fact that the recipe called for lots and lots of corn kernels. I could just imagine biting into soft muffins filled with corn.

Alas, this wasn't to be as I made one error. Not a terribly fatal error but an error nonetheless and an error that caused the muffins to be a little dry and not as delicious as it should have been. The error? Well the recipe called for Self Raising flour and since I didn't have any, I did my usual 'make your own' by adding baking powder to plain flour.

This is the recipe from Le Cordon Bleu Muffins. The original recipe also has a pinch of cayenne pepper but I left that out.

Ingredients
225g Self Raising Flour
150g Cornmeal (polenta)
60g Cheddar (grated)
240g frozen corn kernels
250ml milk
2 eggs
100g butter, melted

Method
Preheat oven 20 210C. Brush a 12 hole muffin pan with melted butter or oil.
Sift flour into a large bowl. Stir in Cornmeal, cheese and corn. Make a well in the centre.
Whisk milk and eggs together and then pour into the well in the dry ingredients together with the butter. Stir with a metal spoon till just combined. Do not overmix as the mixture should be lumpy
Fill muffin pans three quarters full and bake for about 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted in centre of muffin
Leave muffins in tin for 5 minutes before lifting out to wire rack to cool

In the heat of the kitchen and the rush for time however, I miscalculated the measurements and added in half of what I should have. The result - not a well risen, rather dense and semi dry muffin. It still tasted good although it didn't have the correct texture. Still, it was passable and eatable and my son even asked for one the next morning for breakfast.

I just wonder how delicious the muffins would have been if I didn't screw up...