Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Rosie Makes Corn Bread Muffins.

All my Little Hawthornes love my cornbread.
And my cornbread is always evolving.
I started out with Mama Hawthorne's recipe
in which she put a glop of Crisco in her baking dish,
melted it, then poured it into her mixture of
cornmeal, milk, salt, and baking powder.
And the texture of the batter would
immediately change with the addition
of the hot Crisco -
kind of like seizing up,
but I really can't describe it.
And then she would add her egg
and her batter would relax.
No exact measurements were ever given to me.
But Mama Hawthorne's cornbread came out perfect
every time.
"Well, Mama, how much cornmeal did you put in?"
"Just enough."
"Well, Mama, how much milk did you put in?"
"Just until it looks right."
For years, Sister Hawthorne and I
tried to duplicate Mama Hawthorne's "recipe."
We finally decided that Mama didn't want us
to know how to fix cornbread
and she was probably leaving out
a key ingredient or something -
like on the episode of Everybody Loves Raymond,
when Marie gave Deborah her recipe for meatballs
and deliberately mis-labeled one of the spice jars,
so instead of using what she thought was basil,
Deborah was using tarragon,
which truly is NOT a substitute.
Anways, back to Mama Hawthorne's cornbread.
I believe Sister Hawthorne gave up
trying to make it.
I, however, being the hard-headed mule that I am,
persevered.
And like I said,
my cornbread recipe is always evolving.
It ain't Mama's.
But it's mine.
And it's very good.
Plus, I especially like my toppings.
I used to make it in an 8 x 8 baking dish
or sometimes a 9 x 13 dish,
but I found out that a certain amount
of gouging was going on whenever I had
a whole pan of cornbread.
So I decided to switch over to
cornbread mini muffins.
Here's my latest cornbread reincarnation.
My ingredients:
1 1/2 cups corn meal
slightly less than 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
3 TB melted butter
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk
3 ears corn
First I mixed my dry ingredients.
And if you are extremely observant,
you would have noticed in the ingredients picture
I have measured out only one cup of cornmeal.
Not the required 1 1/2 cups in the recipe.
I added in the buttermilk.
And the sour cream.
The milk.
(Which I forgot to put
in the ingredients picture.)
Next time I make this I might try using
all buttermilk instead of 1/2 buttermilk and 1/2 milk,
but I only had the 1/2 cup of buttermilk,
so there you go.
My batter was a tad too wet,
so I ended up adding the extra 1/2 cup cornmeal.
Melted butter went in.
Then the two eggs.
And finally the corn kernels.
I buttered my muffin tins
even though it's a non-stick pan,
since the butter gives a nice crust to the muffins.
And here are my toppings for
the "adult" muffins:
sliced tomatoes
sliced red jalapeno
sliced green onions
sliced green olives
cumin
shredded Monteray Jack and cheddar cheeses
Just pile all the toppings on top of the tomato slice.
Sprinkle with cumin.
All over the baking tray
and certainly not on top of the muffins.
Avoid the muffin,
at all costs.
And top with the cheeses.
And here are my little mini-muffins
after 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven.
I let them sit in the pan for a few minutes.
Here's the plain, unadulterated, child version.
Moist, corny goodness.
Light texture.
I'm glad I wrote down what I did
because I'll be making these again.
The plain ones are very good,
but I really liked the toppings
on the others.
I like a bit of spice and bite
and, well, there's cheese,
and you can never go wrong with cheese.
You do not have to be limited to just these toppings.
You could use black olives.
You could sprinkle cilantro on top.
You could use my new favorite spice
I have in my garden -
fresh coriander seeds.
(The seeds from flowering cilantro.)
You could sprinkle red onions over top.
Ground coriander.
Parsley.
Whatever you have.
(SandySpeak)
And yes, I can just see all the flavors
and they are brilliant.
More SandySpeak.

4 comments:

Rocquie said...

Rosie, those look awesome! I made notes about a former cornbread recipe you posted. I haven't tried topping cornbread, yet, the way you do, but you sure do make it look delicious.

Marilyn said...

Looks divine, Rosie. I can see all the flavors!

Debbie said...

Yummy!! I want both.

Rosie Hawthorne said...

Thank you all for your comments.
I loved these corn muffins.

And Mar, you just keep on seeing all those flavors.