Munchie Monday: Quick and Easy Cornbread/Muffins

This week is Transfer Week.  This means Departing Dinner.  Sister J and I will be helping President and Sister B prepare the dinner. President B will put many racks of ribs in his new Traeger grill which we will warm up. We will bake potatoes, make coleslaw, prepare an ice cream "bar" with bananas, strawberries, nuts, and hot fudge sauce.  We will also make cornbread and cornbread muffins.  Sister J made some muffins with her recipe to take to Church for a Linger Longer.  She shared some with us, along with some fabulous honey butter. Yummy!  Really yummy.

My plan was to make one of the cornbread recipes that has creamed corn in it.  On the strength of that plan, without looking up recipes, I purchased three inexpensive cans of creamed corn.  I was speaking with Daughter M shortly thereafter.  She told me she had the BEST RECIPE EVER for cornbread!  Nice thought.  I am not much of a cornbread fan.  Usually it is dry, crumbly, and flavorless, so I was not holding out much hope. 

That being said, I was wrong!  Completely.  These were so good that I ate two of them immediately.  Rats!  This is the recipe she gave me.  Just look at the ingredients and you will grasp how tasty they are.

Quick and Easy Cornbread/ Cornmeal Muffins

1 cup cornmeal
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cups sugar
2 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup melted butter
2 Tablespoons honey
4 eggs, beaten
2 1/2 cups whole milk.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease a 9 by 13 pan.  In a large bowl mix the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Pour in the vegetable oil, melted butter, honey, beaten eggs, and milk and stir gently just until all the flour/cornmeal has been dampened.  Pour the batter into the greased pan and bake for 45 minutes.  M says you want to see some cracks and light browning.  Remove from oven and let cool.

What I did:  I cut the recipe exactly in half and use my silicon muffin cups--well not exactly muffin cups but little round cake cups.  (The difference is that the cups I have had straight side, not sloping sided like muffin tins have.) This half-batch made twelve fat cakes.

This is the muffins that are bottom-side up, just as I removed them from the the silicon pans.  I set the timer for 15 minutes to let the muffins cool before trying to remove them from the pans.  I have not had good luck in the past when I failed to let the food cool for 15 minutes before trying to extract them.

You can see that the sides are straight and the bottoms are nicely browned.  The tops were not as brown but still okay.  Will you believe me when I say there are no remaining muffins in our house less than 24 hours later?!  In our defense,  I did pass along nearly half of them to our other senior missionaries.  It makes me happy to think they will enjoy them.