Update 12/10: After two years, these muffins still make a frequent appearance at our dinner table. Not only do they come together quickly, like a good muffin recipe does, but they are moist and flavorful and mildly sweetened (not too much, not too little). Just perfect. The great thing about making muffins instead of a pan of cornbread is I can freeze any extra muffins and use them for another dinner. I won’t confess how many I actually eat when I serve these, but I will tell you I make them often!
Cornbread Muffins
Printable Version with Picture
Printable Version
*Makes 12-16 muffins
INGREDIENTS:
2 cups (10 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 cup (about 5 ounces) yellow cornmeal
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
¾ cup (5 ¼ ounces) sugar
8 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled slightly
¾ cup light or regular sour cream
½ cup milk
DIRECTIONS:
Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a standard 12-cup muffin tin (plus a few more – my batches usually make about 16 muffins).
Whisk the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, soda and salt in a medium bowl to combine; set aside. Whisk the eggs in a second medium bowl until well combined and light-colored, about 20 seconds. Add the sugar to the eggs; whisk vigorously until thick and homogenous, about 30 seconds; add the melted butter in 3 additions, whisking to combine after each addition. Add half the sour cream and half the milk and whisk to combine; whisk in the remaining sour cream and milk until combined. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients; mix gently with a rubber spatula until the batter is just combined and evenly moistened. Do not over mix. Using a large spoon sprayed with cooking spray, divide the batter evenly among tins.
Bake until the muffins are light golden brown and a skewer inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean, about 15-18 minutes, rotating the muffin tin from front to back halfway. Cool the muffins in the tin 5 minutes; invert the muffins on a wire rack, stand the muffins upright and cool 5 minutes. Serve warm.
Recipe Source: adapted from The New Best Recipe
{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
The sour cream is your secret weapon and makes this moist. I have always wanted to make corn muffins with sour cream. I am going into the kitchen now and do it. Thanks for the recipe.
I just made these muffins to go with our Chili and they are SO good and perfectly moist. I used muffin cups which made for an easy cleanup! Thanks for sharing your recipe.
I made these tonight and they were great!!! I love them, and they’re such much better than coming from a box. Thanks!
-Michelle
Hi! Do you mean 3/4 c. sugar? These muffins do look good! My husband likes to take the batter and make pancakes out of them. Used to make them from Jiffy mixes, but now we grind popcorn in our wheat grinder…yum!
Michelle – thanks for checking in and letting me know you liked these. I agree, they are so much better than from a box – glad to know they were a hit!
Dandelion – I’m loving that goldtouch pan link you sent. But seriously, $30 bucks for a muffin pan?? That’s a splurge (although well worth it, I am sure).
I’m glad you liked this recipe!
Oh how I love corn muffins…they are so great in the winter. The perfect side for soups and chili!
This recipe is perfect timing for our family! My son made cornbread at school for part of his Thanksgiving feast and he was asking us to make some at home because he liked it so much!My boys and I made a batch of these muffins this morning and they are delicious – I got 18 out of the mixture! Happy Thanksgiving to you, and thanks for all the great recipes you share!
What a perfect side dish to all the comfort food I’ve been craving these days. I have to agree that I must be all northern because I like mine with some sweetness, too.
Wow, yum, easy. We even like them straight out of the freezer – sometimes with Nutella – my husband gets the creativity points.
Those do look good. I’ve heard good things about the New Best Recipe. Is it worth buying?
Yum, thanks for sharing! And, I’ve been looking for a good frozen hot chocolate recipe, THANK YOU! I’ve bought some of the mixes from Serendipity in NY, but I wanted to make it at home. Thanks.:)-Mandy
ummm… YUM!!! I am watering at the mouth! Cant wait to try this!
Jan – Happy Belated Thanksgiving to you, too. And thank you for your nice comment. I’m glad these muffins came around at a perfect time for you to help your son out with his request for cornbread at home!
Nicole – wow, Holden definitely gets creativity points. Never thought to put nutella on these babies, but nutella is pretty much great on anything so I’m not surprised they are delicious.
Frieda – thanks for catching my typo – it is 3/4 cup sugar (I fixed the recipe). That sounds like a great use for your wheat grinder, by the way.Grace – I know, I know, the great debate over cornbread – sugar or no sugar?? I guess I’m pretty northern – I like the sweetness but I hope your grandpa doesn’t care too much.
This is just what I need! Thanks.
Kristi – great idea to serve these muffins with chili. Let me know how they turn out!
Joie de vivre – I actually checked out the New Best Recipe from the library…it was wonderful but after rifling through the pages I only ended up bookmarking maybe 8 to 10 to try so I guess it depends on how much you would use it. If your library has it – check it out and see what you think!
BTW, on your truffles, how do you drizzle the chocolate so beautifully? That was one thing that was left to be deisred from the otherwise PERFECT cookie dough truffles. Thanks!
I just finished baking these and taking them out of the oven. I used my 4 oz ice cream scoop to put the batter into the muffin pan. I got 12 even. They popped right out of the pan. I did not use paper liners.
I wish I had one of those goldtouch pans Williams Sonoma sells. Yikes their expensive!
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/sku7074438/index.cfm?pkey=xsrd0m1%7C16%7C%7C%7C0%7C%7C%7C%7C%7C%7C%7Cmuffin%20tin&cm%5Fsrc=SCH
These are tender and delicious and would go with any meal. North or South. THX for sharing the recipe.
I’m with you – I’m horrible at coming up with side dishes. These sound great – and I even have that cookbook!
Just wanted to let you know I made the cookie dough truffles yesterday and they were WONDERFUL! I don’t really like cookie dough, but they were so creamy- just like truffles! The recipe was so fool-proof, I couldn’t believe how good they taste. More than that, I couldn’t believe how EASY they were. I’ve never used Almond Bark before, and it worked perfectly! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I’m now inspired to try more things after such a huge cooking success!!!
I made these last night to have with some bbq chicken and they were out of this world delicious!! I love cornbread but I’ve never found a recipe that is moist and buttery. This one is what I have been looking for! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
My friends and I have made our own little recipe blog and have a link to yours on ours, but this recipe was too good to not share.
Thanks again. Love your blog!
Hey Melanie – thanks for letting me know you liked these. I make these all the time for a quick bread to serve with dinner. These would be PERFECT with chili!
Love slighly-sweet cornbread. Will have to try these!
although i’m southern through and through, i do enjoy a bit of sugar in my cornbread. i think your muffins sound great (but don’t tell my grandpa).
P.S. Do you have to make these as muffins or could you bake it in a casserole dish and make cornbread? Also do you freeze them after they are baked?
Jamy – I am so glad you liked the truffles! Your comment was so upbeat and fun for me to read. Thank you for letting me know you tried them. As for the drizzling – I fill a small ziploc bag with the melted chocolate and then cut off a tiny (very tiny) tip of the corner and use it to drizzle the chocolate. It works wonders!
I am making chili tonight and I’m going to try these instead of my usual Jiffy muffins. Thanks! They look wonderful.
Just wondering. Do you like these muffins or your cornbread better? Can you pick a favorite between them?
Veronica – these muffins are delicious…BUT, the cornbread definitely wins out for me if it is a side-by-side favorite comparison.
Is that because of the fluffy honey butter or would it win anyway? And what if I made the cornbread into muffins? Would it still win? Are you starting to wonder why I’m being such a pest?
If I told you why all the questions, you’d think I was sorta weird. Oh well. I admit it. I am weird.
Veronica – the fluffy honey butter undoubtedly sweetens the deal a little but even without it, the cornbread would win out. Like I said, the muffins are great, but the cornbread has a deliciously soft, tender crumb that just melts in your mouth.
So now tell me…why all the questions (and of course I don’t think you are a pest!)? I’m weird too, so I won’t judge you, I promise.
Thank you! The reason I wanted to know is probably going to freak you out and I wouldn’t have given you a heads up but now I have to since I asked too many questions and made you suspicious. I’m entering a lot of stuff into the state fair food competitions this year, as many as I can. Last year I entered some things, most original recipes, and won 2 first place and one 3rd and was a little bummed that I travelled that far only to win three. So I decided I will do as many as I possibly can to make it worth the long trip, even if I don’t have a killer recipe. I decided to use some of your bread recipes and some friends’ recipes for other things and most of them I don’t even plan to try out before taking them! See? I’m crazy. I will try as many as I can to make sure it’s what I want to enter, but the reason I was asking all the questions was to narrow down how many things I have to try before deciding.
See? I’m crazy. And now you’re probably nervous! Wish us luck–haha. I will DEFINITELY let you know if & how many of your recipes win ribbons. That way you can rename them things like Blue Ribbon Cornbread–hahaha. I’d like all the recipes to be mine but there are only a few of my own that I deem worthy so I’m gonna steal my recipes for now. I figure the recipe is half the equation, but I’m doing the work and in the end, my skill in the kitchen is just as much being judged as the recipe itself.
Veronica – that doesn’t freak me out – I hope you have good success with your recipes. Good luck!
These are great and they do freeze well…now I definitely need to try the cornbread w/honey butter next (Does that freeze well too?)
Elizabeth – I’ve never tried freezing the other recipe for cornbread (made in a square baking pan)…I think the cornbread muffins would probably freeze a bit better than the pan cornbread.
I realize this is months after anyone asked about using this recipe in muffin tins, but I just tried it tonight and it worked great. I think the muffin tin route made them a titch drier than when just baking it in a square pan though. I’m making them to take dinner in to someone, so I thought the muffins might be a little easier. I loved it as corn bread and I have to say as corn muffins, it is pretty darn good too! Best corn bread recipe I’ve ever tried, hands down!
Oops, I meant to post this on the corn bread recipe, not the corn muffin recipe!! So, to clarify, I used the corn bread recipe and baked it in muffin tins.
Jill – thanks for letting me know your opinion on the cornbread baked as muffins!