Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Roasted Hatch Chile Corn Muffins; Daring Cooks Challenge, August 2012

(about 12 muffins)


Rachael of pizzarossa was our August 2012 Daring Cook hostess and she challenged us to broaden our knowledge of cornmeal! Rachael provided us with some amazing recipes and encouraged us to hunt down other cornmeal recipes that we’d never tried before – opening our eyes to literally 100s of cuisines and 1000s of new-to-us recipes!

Cornmeal is something I rarely cook with. The closest I've come to is masa harina I use to make tamales. What's interesting to me is the package of "cornmeal" I picked up looks very much like masa harina, except perhaps the texture is a touch coarser. I've always assumed cornmeal was rougher, more granular.

Although quite common, I made corn muffins because I've never made them before and they seemed easy enough. There was a recipe on the back of the package I used as a guide. I made a few adjustments and added leftover roasted hatch chile peppers, (there's a Hatch Chile Pepper Festival going on here at the moment). These muffins turned out great. They were still delicious a few days later when I split them, covered them with cheddar cheese and broiled them in the oven a few minutes.

adapted from recipe on the back of Pioneer Enriched Cornmeal
1 cup fine yellow cornmeal
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 large egg
3 tbsp agave nectar
3 tbsp olive oil
3/4 - 1 cup fresh shucked corn, about 1 ear
1/2 cup *roasted hatch chile peppers, chopped

Prepare a 12 standard size muffin tin by lining it with papers, then set set aside.

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.


Combine the milk, egg, agave nectar and olive oil in another bowl. Set aside.

Add the corn and roasted chili peppers to the cornmeal mixture, then pour the liquid mixture over those. Stir until everything is just combined.

Divide the batter evenly among the 12 lined muffin tins. Bake for 15- 20 minutes or until the tops have browned and a toothpick inserted into the centre of a muffin comes out clean.

*If you can't find roasted hatch chile peppers, then you can roast them yourself. This recipe uses red bell peppers, but the method is the same. I usually remove the seeds when I roast peppers, but the prepared ones I purchased contained seeds and they were fine; it's up to you!

3 comments:

Jenni said...

Gorgeous corn muffins! I love all the extra ingredients you used, I bet they made the muffins pretty amazing! I wish I had one right now! :)

Anonymous said...

Your muffins look gorgeous! And so flavoursome with the chillies and fresh corn! :)

mjskit said...

I call this the perfect corn muffin! Love the use of Hatch chile!!! To see another challenge that used New Mexico green chile, check out my site. Headed to see what else you have here. :)

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