TWD: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins

This week’s TWD was chosen by Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake: savory corn and pepper muffins! Though I’ve become much more proficient in the kitchen over the past year, one thing I still really struggle with is muffins. I thought this week’s selection would be another opportunity for me to improve so I welcomed it!

The original recipe for these muffins is really interesting. It’s a southwestern take on corn muffins and includes chili powder, black pepper, jalapeno pepper, red bell pepper and cilantro. I’d love to say I was adventurous and tried this variation….but I didn’t. Dorie offered an alternative “playing around” version which was a more basic corn muffin and that’s the route I went. I knew the southwestern variation wasn’t my thing but I love plain corn muffins so I was looking forward to trying them.

Let me start with the good news: these are really delicious corn muffins! I followed Dorie’s recipe for plain corn muffins but I left out the corn kernels as I didn’t have any on hand. I thought the muffins were just sweet enough and had a great texture. Now for the bad news…my issues with muffins continue. My muffins were really flat and in fact, a few even had concave tops. I can’t figure out why muffins rarely bake up properly. I was careful not to overmix the batter and really thought these would turn out well. At least they taste good!

You can find the recipe on Rebecca’s blog if you’d like to try these muffins. Be sure to head over to TWD to see other variations of Dorie’s corn muffins.