Cornbread muffins... delicious!

Night before last I made some cornbread muffins, modifying a Pioneer Woman recipe to make it less bad for you (she uses shortening!) and removing some nuts and cranberries. They were SO good, and made a great breakfast the next day, too. Here's the recipe:

CORNBREAD MUFFINS

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp sugar
1 cup lowfat buttermilk
1/2 cup 1% milk
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 large egg
2 tbsp butter olive oil **
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Combine first 5 ingredients in a bowl and stir with a whisk to get out any lumps.

In a separate bowl combine the buttermilk, milk, egg and baking soda.

Isn't' that heart shaped reflection cool?

Stir to combine. Pour wet ingredients into the dry, and stir to combine.

Add olive oil and vanilla and stir some more, just to combine.

Spray a muffin tin or min-loaf pan with cooking spray and fill 2/3 full. Bake 15-20 min depending on the size of your pans. (I used this nifty Nordicware mini-bundt pan, and then mini-muffin tins for the remaining batter.)

If your recipe makes 14 muffins, the nutrition is 136 calories for 2, which is awesome! As you can see, there's just one egg, and the olive oil, so nutritionally speaking it's a great deal.

I also made a cinnamon honey butter to spread on by combining 1/4 cup room temperature salted butter with about 1/8 cup creamed cinnamon honey butter from a local bee keeper. You could use regular honey and some cinnamon, but watch the consistency - the "creaming" of the honey makes it thick (there's no cream, it's basically whipped), so the honey butter was still spreadable.

**We have an olive oil store here called the Midtown Olive Press. They sell a butter flavored (organic) olive oil that is one of the best products ever. You can use it for all baking except cookies, and you use 1/2 of the amount vs regular butter. I also use it to pop popcorn, and sauté fish... Anything you want butter flavor but no saturated fat. You can order from them if you don't live here. I give it my highest recommendation!