Cornbread Muffins From Home Ground Cornmeal (or not)

[Angela]

Adventures in Self Reliance

You know your dry corn is really dry when the kernels wiggle like loose teeth and come off the cob fairly easily. Getting the kernels off the cob is not hard. You can knock them off with your fingers or to speed up the process you can rub two corn cobs together. Do it over a clean surface as the kernels don't know where exactly you want them to land, so they end up all over the place. Even more so if you let your kids do it.

Once the kernels were off, I cleaned them up by shaking them outside in the wind and using a strainer to get a lot of the chaff off them. Then I put some through my grain mill with the corn/bean auger in it and ground it into cornmeal. I grew Bloody Butcher Corn this year. I thought it would be more red when it was ground. It turned out kind of purple.

Purple cornmeal is good. Then I made my favorite cornbread muffins with it.

2 cups cornmeal (you really don't have to grind your own)
1 cup white flour
1 cup wheat flour (or 2 cups total white)
1 cup sugar
2 TB baking powder
A little salt
2/3 cup oil
6 TB butter, melted
4 eggs
2 1/2 cups milk (equivalent amount of powdered milk is fine here also)

Preheat oven to 375. Combine cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in large mixing bowl. In another bowl combine oil, butter, eggs, and milk, then add wet mixture to dry ingredients and mix. Spoon the batter into greased or paper lined muffin tins and bake 20 minutes or so. Makes 24 delicious muffins that your kids will be glad to have so they can eat less of the chili you're serving and still get full. You know how that goes.

The muffins turned out kind of purple. Imagine that. Purple and golden. Kind of like LSU. Yeah, here's the LSU muffins I made from Bloody Butcher corn.

There is a certain satisfaction in turning something from a seed into a meal. Just don't ask my kids how many times at dinner I mentioned that we grew those cornbread muffins . . .

[ChefTessBakeresse]

Yes! Those are the ones! Look how freaky cool! You grew the corn, dried it, milled it and baked it. You're a pioneer chick!