Christmas is probably the only time in the year where you shouldn’t feel guilty of gormandizing. After all it’s a time for celebration and joy with your family and friends. On Christmas, in my family, we have various family traditions, however over the last few years, since moving to North America, I have introduced some new culinary traditions to our Christmas gatherings.

One of them is having buttermilk cornbread at our dinner table. Over the last five years, I make sure to always have cornbread at our Christmas even if we are not hosting the traditional supper at home. For mysterious reasons, I love having cornbread for Christmas. I just find it to be comforting and of course delicious especially when used in turkey stuffing.

Usually, I bake my cornbread in a cast iron skillet because I enjoy the rustic and simple side of the recipe. However, this year, since we had people coming over, I decided to make a change and do cornbread muffins instead of a big cornbread in a cast iron skillet. I mostly liked the result because individual portions gave a chic and elegant dimension to this basic and classic recipe. And chic always rhymed with a fancy dinner, especially during the holidays. Maybe next year I will do it again.

 

Prep: 30 min                       Cook: 25-30 min                 8 Servings

 

INGREDIENTS

1 cup of Cornmeal

1 cup of Flour

1 and ½ cups of Buttermilk

125 g of unsalted butter, melted

2 Eggs, beaten

2 tablespoons of Sugar or Honey

1 and ½ teaspoon of Baking powder

½ teaspoon of Baking soda

¼ teaspoon of Salt

 

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven at 375 °F.
2. Lightly butter and flour a muffin pan and set aside.
3. In a mixing bowl, whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda and salt. And reserve for later.
4. In a large mixing bowl, with a whisk, mix butter and sugar. Then, whisk in the beaten eggs and beat until the mixture is smooth. Add the buttermilk and mix to combine.
5. With a spoon, gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients; make sure to eliminate any lumps when stirring the batter.
6. Pour the batter into the muffin pan and bake for 25 minutes or until the top is golden brown and a tooth pick inserted into the center of each muffin comes out clean. Remove from the oven. Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before unmolding the muffins.

And it’s time to serve.

 

TIPS

You can brush the muffins with butter when they come out from the oven if you like it.

If you made more muffins than needed, you can always store them in the freezer. Just put them in a hermetic freezer bag.