The Best Cornbread Muffins

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These easy, totally made-from-scratch cornbread muffins are the perfect accompaniment for soups, chilis, and your holiday ham or turkey! Feel free to adjust the sweetness as desired to suit your palate as you do with my Jiffy cornbread – not everyone likes sweet cornbread like I do!

For more cornbread-based recipes, try my seriously fantastic (and personal favorite!) Jiffy Corn Casserole or my honey-sweetened skillet cornbread.

The Best Cornbread Muffins

Cornbread muffins are a southern tradition for a reason – they are not only made out of affordable and easy-to-get ingredients, but they taste amazing piping hot as a side dish and slathered with salty butter! Whether as the base for chili or served underneath some sopping wet and juicy brisket, cornbread is the perfect carb for any meal!

There are lots of different variations of cornbread out there, from true Dixie southern cornbread to Northern Yankee cornbread, but this basic muffin recipe will be amazing to suit any taste. 

The Best Cornbread Muffins Ingredients

Make sure you look at the recipe card at the very bottom for the exact amounts so that you know exactly what to buy for this recipe.

• Butter, melted and then cooled

• Honey

• Eggs

• Sour cream

• Buttermilk

• all-purpose flour

• Yellow cornmeal

• Baking powder

• White sugar

• Salt

• Can of corn kernels drained well

How To Make The Best Cornbread Muffins

• Spray a 12 well muffin tin with some non-stick cooking spray (you can also use muffin liners as well   

• In a small bowl, whisk the melted butter, honey, eggs, sour cream, and buttermilk until combined together

• In a separate, medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, sugar, and salt

• Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, stirring gently until just combined

• Stir in the corn kernels until just mixed through

• Divide the batter evenly between the muffin wells

• Bake in a preheated oven at 350 Fahrenheit for 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean

• Remove from the pan and then cool for 5 minutes, serving warm       

How To Stop Your Muffins From Sticking

The most annoying part about making muffins, or any kind of baked food at all, is trying to figure out how to stop it from sticking.

Muffins especially love to stick to the pan, forcing you to have to lever it out with a spatula or just eat it straight out of the tin with a spoon.

To avoid sticking, you have a few different options.

The simplest is probably some non-stick spray, made of some low-calorie oil; you just spray the entire tray with the oil and then pour your batter in. The only problem is that it is very easy to accidentally miss some of the tray, resulting in some unwanted sticking.

The other option is some simple muffin liners. This makes it impossible for the batter to stick to anything, as the paper liners literally peel right off after baking.

These work great, but it is so incredibly easy to accidentally overfill a muffin liner or miss it as you are pouring the batter in, resulting in some burnt batter around the muffin wells.

The tastiest option might be to just rub the entire tray with softened butter or bacon grease! The butter will stop the muffins from sticking to the tray perfectly, as well as making it taste buttery or bacony and rich on the outside, helping to crisp up the exterior as it bakes.

An added benefit to the butter/bacon option is that it is really easy to see where you miss a spot on the tray, making it unlikely you will get dry spots.

Choose whichever option best works for you – or, to be scientific about it, do all of them at once with the same recipe. Divide up the batter and the tray into thirds and see which method is best!

What Kind Of Cornbread Are These Muffins?

A lot of people get very heated about cornbread, both as to its origins and whether or not any recipe is really a “true” cornbread.

On the spectrum of Southern, corn, and water only cornbread to a fancy, jalapeño and cheddar Northern cornbread, this recipe falls somewhere in the middle, with maybe a bit of a leaning more towards the North.

The use of buttermilk and sour cream not only provides a rich and nutritious flavor base for the muffins but also provides some much-needed sourness to help cut through all the richness.

The use of sugar and honey doesn’t really turn this into a proper sweet cornbread but helps to amplify the already slightly sweet flavor of the yellow cornmeal.

The addition of some actual corn kernels also makes for an even tastier base, as it provides a ton of textural difference and some unique flavors.

And these taste FAN-TASTIC, so that’s all that matters!

Looking for more delicious Thanksgiving recipes for side dishes? Try:

• Roasted parnips
• Corn fritters
• Creamy corn pudding
• Creamed corn

Enjoy!

Love,

Karlynn

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