Made From "Scratch" Corn Bread Muffins

I'm a Jiffy Cornbread type of girl. I always have been. I like a cornbread that is sweet and buttery, and Jiffy normally does it for me. But last night as I was fixing dinner (Chicken Enchilada soup from Fresh Finds...and I can only "Find" them at Big Lots...so GOOD...and inexpensive, you MUST give their soups a try!!), and I knew that I needed some bread to go with the soup. My husband is a big bread eater. He was raised to have some sort of bread at every meal. So if I don't fix it, he goes through the bread bin (well, ziplock bag on the counter) and grabs any kind he can get his hands on. Since I was making a Chicken Enchilada soup that I was adding Rice and Bean chips, sour cream, and cheese to, I felt that corn bread would be a great companion...and it was! Since I had corn meal already from making things like English Muffins, I knew making cornbread from scratch was going to be the order of the day! So here's my recipe:

Made From "Scratch" Corn Bread Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 cup corn meal
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup turbinado sugar (you can use regular white sugar, but I really love the "molasses" taste of the turbinado 
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbsp honey
•  2 Tbsp butter, melted

Directions: 

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 
2. Mix the dry ingredients together in a small bowl, and the wet ingredients (except the melted butter) in a large bowl. Once those two are well blended, combine them in the large bowl and mix well. (TIP: this is where I would also sometimes add garlic powder and/or shredded cheddar cheese as well, but I wanted them "plain" last night). Let the batter sit for about 3-5 minutes. 
3. While the batter is sitting, prepare your muffin tins. Either spray with a cooking spray or line with cupcake wrappers. 
4. Fill each cupcake wrapper about 3/4 full. This recipe will make 12 regular size muffins (or 6 LARGE muffins or 24 mini-muffins...whatever floats your boat). 
5. Bake for 25 minutes. 
6. Right after you pull the muffins out, brush the tops of the muffins with a little bit of the melted butter. 

That's pretty much it. It's not that much harder than dumping a box (or two) of Jiffy mix in a bowl and adding an egg and milk. But I really love that I'm finding uses for that corn meal that I have sitting in a large mason jar in my pantry. My family loved the muffins, and I was pleasantly surprised by how good they were! 

Don't tell me this doesn't make you want to whip up a batch of White Bean and Apple Chili! Yummy!