Corn Muffins

 25 May 2021

Recipe from The Cook's Illustrated Baking Book, America's Test Kitchen, 2013, p. 48; also available online

I have tried various recipes for corn bread: the northern version and the southern version and a hybrid version and my favorite, an Alton Brown version. However, searching back through the blog, I haven't tried corn muffins. A muffin would seem to be a convenient size as a dinner side dish or leftover for breakfast. Their smaller size, too, should cook faster and more evenly. All these are good things, but would they have a good texture and the right level of sweetness? I found a recipe in one of my cookbooks and subsequently found that it had been presented, with a few small changes, on the "America's Test Kitchen" TV show way back in 2004. 

This recipe used what Alton Brown referred to as the "muffin method", dry ingredients and wet ingredients are mixed separately then gently combined to form the final batter. All-purpose flour, stone-ground cornmeal (I used Bob's Red Mill medium grind cornmeal), baking powder, baking soda, and salt were whisked together. In a separate bowl, eggs were whisked, sugar was whisked into the eggs followed by melted butter. To this mixture, half of the sour cream was whisked in, then half of the milk, followed by the remainder of the sour cream and them the milk. The wet ingredients were added to the dry and mixed gently with a rubber spatula. The batter was portioned into mounds in 12 greased muffin cups and baked at 400°. Total time, excluding the short cooling time, was just 50 minutes.

These are good corn muffins, worth making again and a good alternative to corn bread. They have a good sweetness level. They are a little gritty, but not too gritty, a problem that could be solved by using a finer stone-ground, whole-grain corn meal. They are easy and quick to make, all of the mixing is done by hand with a whisk and spatula and they bake for less than 20 minutes. They cool quickly so can be eaten warm shortly after they come from the oven. They also keep well and are good to eat after a quick re-heating in the microwave.