thayirsaadham

I love muffins. I really do. They are very easy to whip up, can be frozen and reheated for a quick snack and are perfect as to-go foods. Plus they can be made as healthy as possible by reducing the amount of butter or oil and by substituting it with applesauce or yogurt or buttermilk. You can even add jam to the batter! Don’t ask me why I am so excited at adding jam to the muffin batter. But I am. Imagine biting into a warm, moist muffin and tasting blueberry or blackberry jam. I am drooling.

I do make muffins pretty often. I have never posted any here because I almost always finish them before taking pictures. I make muffins in batches of 6. As soon as I make them and they are cooling, I think to myself “I should take pictures.” Then I start looking for the camera and 99% of the time, as soon as I switch on the camera, it tells me to change the batteries. I am great at anticipating things and being ready for them, you know? So anyway, I charge the batteries and by the time they get charged and I remember to take the pictures, the muffins are gone. I swear I don’t know how but somehow I end up eating all the muffins. My waistline is not happy but who cares?

Today, I am posting this recipe for savory muffins. I made these corn muffins to go with this Moroccan Red Lentil-Bean Stew that I made sometime back. They were a perfect side to go with the soup. I searched online for corn muffin recipes and there were tons of them. I finally ended up using the common ingredients but I kicked up the heat a notch by grinding green chillies into the muffin batter.

Ingredients

Makes 6 regular - sized muffins

1. All purpose flour - 1/2 cup
2. Stone ground yellow cornmeal - 1/2 cup
3. Baking powder - 1/2 tbsp
4. Chilli powder - 1 tsp
5. Salt - to taste
6. Ground black pepper - 1/2 tsp
7. Baking soda - 1/4 tsp
8. Butter milk - 1/2 cup
9. Vegetable Oil - 2 tbsp
10. Green chillies - 2
11. Corn kernels - 1/4 cup
12. Green onions - 4-5 (chopped finely)

Recipe

1. Preheat the oven to 375F.
2. Whisk the dry ingredients (1-7) together and keep aside.
3. Grind the green chillies with 1 tbsp of water.
4. Mix the wet ingredients (8 & 9) with the ground green chillies.
5. Add the corn kernels and green onions to the wet ingredients.
6. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients.
7. Mix gently. This is an important step in making muffins. Overcome the temptation to be thorough with the mixing. It is okay to have some lumps and/or some unmixed flour. These will be covered when the muffins are baking in the oven.
8. Grease the muffin pan (or line them with paper cups) and fill the cups with batter up to 2/3-rds of the cup.
9. Bake for 15-18 minutes.
10. Check for doneness, remove the muffin tray out the oven.
11. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes.
12. After 5 minutes, gently pry the muffins out of the muffin pan.
13. Let the muffins cool on a wire rack for 5 more minutes. Serve with soup

A word of caution when using this recipe. This is a bit spicy. Please reduce the amount of green chillies/chilli powder/pepper according to your taste. Taste the final muffin batter and adjust accordingly. Some corn muffin recipes also have sugar in them. So, you can also add sugar to yours to compensate for the heat.

There can be a lot of variations to this recipe. You can add bell peppers, fresh cilantro. You can even add other vegetables and make it a more wholesome muffin. I am thinking of making a version with more vegetables and without the corn meal. Maybe I will try with whole wheat flour to make it more healthy. What do you think?