Summer Food: “So Much Corn” Cornbread Muffins

I walked down into the garden office yesterday and realized we had a large bag of ears of corn lying on the table.

Okay, I couldn’t just leave this bag of sweet corn rotting on the table. And then I had this urge to cook. Thirdly, I needed an inspiring subject for the blog!

So, what to do with seven ears of corn??? There was the possibility of making corn chowder, but that seemed like it would take too long (we had a meeting at 4:00 and I was putting this together in my head around 3:30…) Also, it was just too hot to have chowder.

With the heat influencing me to think of summer and the ticking of the clock motivating me to be uber quick, there was one treat I could think of: cornbread.

Quick and easy. Sweet and delicious. Yes, it was going to be cornbread for this week. Specifically a cornbread so studded with corn kernels that it would seem that the cornmeal had reverted to its original state.

I scraped the kernels from the cobs, with sweet juices squirting all over the cutting board as I did so.

Quickly the bowl filled with corn. I started to worry that there would be to much corn for a bread to form. But I was under a time crunch so my worries were fleeting.

Next I mixed together the dry ingredients. Cornmeal, flour, sugar and baking powder. Again I was lacking measuring cups, so the measurements, more or less, turned into sizes based on piles.

As I was carmelizing onions from the garden in a pan (with butter of course) I need to melt some butter for the batter. Unfortunately the microwave had gone kaput and the pots and pans had seemingly decided to vacate Lowell (except for the one I was currently using.) I guess I could have used the Sun outside (this heat must stop) so it became impromptu double boiler time! Plate on top of pan with onions. Top it all off with half a stick of butter and in a few moments, voilà, melted butter!

Into the dry ingredients went the butter, mlik, eggs and carmelized onions.

Followed by a all that corn!

Finally into the muffin tins which, amazingly, I remembered to grease. Next, the oven.

Then I realized I had forgotten major components to any food: seasoning. How can you forget salt in a recipe but remember to grease muffin tins??? I don’t know. But I pulled the muffin tins out and sprinkled salt and pepper on them individually. Please be tasty!!!

Just as the meeting was getting started, the timer went off and the muffins came out.

There they were. Golden brown. Speckled with forgotten seasoning. And exploding with corn kernels.