Baking Bouchon - Recipe 4: Corn Muffins

The truth is that the recipe for Corn Muffins is in the same section of the cookbook as Plain Scones so I shouldn't have made them today.  You should be reading about Madeleines right now but I wanted something to go with the roast chicken and sauteed kale we were having for dinner and I haven't purchased my Madeleine pan yet so you get Corn Muffins.

This picture is highly inaccurate... the recipe actually calls for Baking Powder, not Baking Soda.  Good thing I read it again before I added it but I was too lazy to re-stage my ingredients for another photo op.

The roasted chicken recipe I use is this one from my Williams Sonoma Chicken cookbook.  I've made it a few times and it always comes out super moist which is due to the fact that you brine the chicken in salt water for a few hours before roasting it.  Plus, there's Wine Jus.  Yum.  Anyway, back to muffins.

Thomas instructed me to make the muffin batter and let it sit overnight before baking.  He insists this is the key to moist muffins because the liquid has time to hydrate the flour in the batter.  I really wanted these muffins today so I let the batter sit in the fridge for about 4 hours before baking.  The muffins were pretty darn moist so maybe he's got a point and maybe I'll grow some patience before Bran Muffins come around and let the batter rest a whole night.  Patience, generally, is not my thing.

 I took yet another liberty with this recipe, as it wants you to make 6 big muffins.  I don't have a giant muffin tin, so we got 12 regular size muffins.  I just decreased the baking time by a few minutes.

In theory I shouldn't have liked these muffins.  You see, I'm from the South (well, kind of.  Some of my people are from the South and I've lived in the South more years than not but I didn't grow up there... anyway, when it's convenient, I claim to be Southern).  In the South, cornbread doesn't have sugar in it (or very little) and is ALWAYS cooked in a cast iron skillet.  No exceptions.  I also prefer my cornbread with a higher ratio of cornmeal to flour (these are 1:4, I usually like a 2:1) On top of my issues, was CA's issue that they have corn kernels in them, which he's against.  Jalapenos OK, corn kernels, bad.  Against all odds, these were actually really good.  Then, I convinced myself that this isn't really cornbread at all (yes, I'm aware that the title of the recipe is not cornbread and yes, it took me a couple of hours to figure that out).  This recipe is in the Scones & Muffins section of the cookbook so they may actually be Muffins - like the kind you eat for breakfast.  Which is exactly what I plan to do tomorrow.

Julie