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    Tuesday
    Jul242012

    Blue Corn Berry Muffins

    Well, I had to do it. I had to make something else in the muffin tin to see if it was totally bitched.

    And one of the small veggie places that seems to specialize in local and as-close-as-possible foods had giant vats of blueberries on sale. So of course, blueberry muffins. And blueberry smoothies. And blueberries with yogurt and granola...

    Just the muffins in this post.

    Now, those of you who've never seen me in meatspace propbably don't know that I have some issues with colour. For a lot of years I wore a lot of black because I'm just not good at matching things. Warm colours? Cool colours? Wut? Eventually I gave up and just started wearing green pants with a blue tshirt and red sneakers. Monochormatic outfits are my friend.

    And so I decided to make blueberry muffins using blue masa. Monochromatic breakfasts.

    Don't worry, Canada Customs didn't know what blue masa was either when I brought it back across the border.

    Masa is nixtamalized cornmeal. It's cornmeal treated with an alkali in order to make the vitamins in the cornmeal available. It also make the proteins in corn usable by humans. And if you mix corn, squash, and beans in one dish, you end up with a perfectly complete source of protein.

    Of course blue masa is just masa made from blue corn. If you've never had it, it's totally awesome. Tastes mostly the same, but dude! It's freaking blue!

    Think about it... naturally occuring blue stuff is pretty rare. Even moreso is naturally occuring blue food.

    Blue Corn Blue Berry Muffins

    What You Need

    • 2 c blue masa
    • 1 tbsp baking powder
    • 1/4 tsp salt
    • 1 tbsp lemon zest
    • 2 tbsp lemon juice
    • 1 c cream and or milk
    • 2 eggs
    • 1 tsp vanilla
    • 1/4 c honey
    • 1/2 c melted butter
    • plus a bit more butter for greasing the muffin tin
    • blueberries!

    What you gotta do:

    So, we're going to start this off by souring our cream and or milk. If you have buttermilk, use it, and skip this step. I never have buttermilk. For some reason the smallest container I can find of it is 1 litre, and I will never use 1 L of buttermilk before it manages to go bad. Hell, half the time I can't use a litre of regular milk before it sours.

    You can sour your milk / cream by adding lemon juice to it.

    Then, in your biggest bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and add the lemon zest.

    The rest of this goes pretty quickly, so preheat your oven to 400 and melt some butter to grease your muffin tin (or line it with papers).

    To your soured cream, add the vanilla and honey.

    1/4 cup isn't a lot of honey, no. But you'll be loading these muffins with super sweet berries so you don't really need the sugar sweetness. You can add more if you'd like, but these work for me.

    Plus, if you only use 1/4 cup in the batter you have an excuse to drizzle the muffins with honey when you eat them. ;)

    Add the eggs and the melted butter. 

    Beat this liquidy stuff all together and then pour it into the dry stuff.

    Mix the two until they're just combined and then dump in the berries. At least 2 cups.

    Fold the blueberries in gently and then fill your cups with them.

    You should be able to generously fill all 12 spots with fabulously blue batter.

    Bake them for about 20 minutes, but maybe start checking around 18. You don't want these overdone. Cornbread can seem really dry if it's overbaked.

    Nothing a little butter and honey won't solve though.

    Full of explodey blue goodness.

    Let them cool a good 10 minutes in the pan before you try extracting them. If your pan is fine, you should have no problems.

    Mine was not. They totally stuck to the sides and the bottom. Just as bad as the quiches did. Pan is bitched.

    But, I'm damn good at getting stuck things out of pans, and with my trusty paring knife and spoon, I was able to do this.

    Not pretty, but it's out.

    These are best eaten the day they were made, as with all cornbread, but if you do package and freeze them, just remember to bring along some butter and honey to go with them.

    I've got honey in my desk drawer at work.

    What have you got stashed in your drawers at work?

    Reader Comments (1)

    I just might have to try these. I love the picture of the little blueberry volcanoes. Mmmmm... blueberry lava.

    July 24, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterTaneasha

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