Corn Muffins

I know I'm a day late with these, but yesterday was very busy with preparations and these muffins are good even when it's not Thanksgiving!


In my family, it's a tradition that either my brother or I always makes the Thanksgiving cornbread. We also always use the same recipe which comes from an old, yellowed kid's cookbook we have where all the recipes are accompanied by little sketches showing exactly what to do and most of the dishes are as simple as say, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

This recipe is probably the most complicated one in the book in fact. However it is very good. Last year, I made it in Milan for a little improvised Thanksgiving dinner I organized with my German housemate and the guests, who had never eaten cornbread before (they were all either German, Italian, or British), though suspicious at first were quickly won over by it! They were not so quickly won over by the cranberry sauce but I suppose you can't have everything...

This year I decided to spice up the recipe a bit by making muffins instead of bread and I added parmesan to half the muffins and thyme to the other half. Both flavorings worked really well, though I wouldn't advise adding them together (I tried that on a test run and it just didn't work as well).

You will need: (makes about 12 muffins):
150 g plain flour
150 g cornmeal
2 spoonfuls of baking powder
1 spoonful of salt
Maple syrup (the recipe calls for this but you can also substitute honey or another type of syrup, which I did here)
250 ml milk
55 g butter
2 eggs
Parmesan
Thyme

About half an hour or so before beginning, take out the eggs and the milk so that they'll be room temperature when you start your muffins. Preheat the oven to 400ºF/20oºC. In a small saucepan, heat the butter until melted. Set aside to cool.

Use some extra butter to butter the muffin tin (or loaf pan if you want to just make bread). Sift together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt, and then add in the syrup.

Beat the eggs, and add them to the milk and melted butter. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ones, stirring until everything is thoroughly mixed, but no more. Just make sure there's no flour anywhere.

Pour half the batter into another bowl. Grate the parmesan over this half, and stir in. Sprinkle a good quantity of thyme into the other half and mix that in too. Spoon the batter from both bowls into the muffin tin.


Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the muffins start to brown on top (it only took about 15 minutes in my unruly oven).

Let cool a bit, but serve warm if possible!