Sunday, March 6, 2011

Mini corn and ham muffins

Last weekend I made some mini corn muffins for an Oscars party we attended. I opted for mini-muffins as they seemed easy to handle and eat in a party environment. What I found, though, was these muffins were a bit bland. A reason could be because I skipped the chives part of the recipe, which went as follows (taken from food.com):

Ingredients:
1 cup self-raising flour (or self-raising gluten free flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
30 g butter, melted
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
3 slices ham, finely chopped
125 g corn kernels, drained
2 tablespoons chopped chives
1/4 cup cheese, grated
1 slice ham, for decorating (optional)
Change Measurements: US Metric

Directions:
Prep Time: 20 mins

Total Time: 35 mins
1 Preheat oven to 180°C Lightly grease a 24 hole mini-muffin pan.
2 Sift the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl.
3 Combine the butter, milk and eggs together. Then stir this mix into the sifted flour. Stir until only just combined-do not overmix.
4 Add remaining ingredients, except the cheese. Stir in very lightly.
5 Spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin pans. Fill the holes until 3/4 full. Sprinkle over the cheese, and some extra shredded ham if desired.
6 Bake 15 minutes or until lightly golden. If using gluten free flour allow the muffins to cool for 5 minutes in the tin before turning out.

If there was any spark to any of this, it was provided by the corn kernels, which I chopped up before mixing in. They had the taste and feel of raisins. Still, though, the flavor of the muffins was flat and I felt a little sorry for anyone who chanced upon them. If I were to do it again, I’d go a little easier on the baking powder and add a richer, saltier ham (I went with the common honey-baked).