Corn Muffins - Spicy & Savory!

This is my first Daring Baker's Challenge #1 and I was quite apprehensive on what the challenge would be.. i am taking my baby steps towards baking & in the new found enthusiasm, went ahead & joined it and later was apprehensive on what would i have to do.. can i pull it off!! So, when this challenge came through, i was thrilled :).. Bcoz it was like the first step..to start of a little slow & over a period of time, learn more & get adventurous..

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

The principle behind the challenge was to stick to baking without yeast, had to be less that 1.5 hrs and you could go ahead make it in form of bread or muffins or popovers! I knew i would make muffins, but i wanted to do something spicy.. i have always had sweet ones & was on search for ideas & found one, which worked just fine for me & also involved the addition of corn :)..I got the recipe from here and made it to an eggless spicy corn muffin!!

Ingredients

1. All purpose flour/Maida - 1/3 cup

2. Corn flour - 1/3 cup

3. Baking powder - 1tsp

4. Yogurt - 1/3 cup

5. Oil - 2tbsp

6. Hot Water -1/4cup

7. Corn - 1/4 cup

8. Cilantro - 1/4 cup

9. Chillies - 2 or 3

10. Salt - as per taste

11. Sugar - 1-2 tsp

12. Chilli flakes - 1tsp

13. Feta Cheese - 1-2 tbsp (optional)

Preparation Time!!

1. Sieve the All purpose flour, corn flour, baking powder, sugar in a bowl

2. Add oil, yogurt and whip gently to mix well

3a. Add the wet ingredients slowly to the dry one to mix well. Don't beat a lot, gently mix for the flour to blend ( The muffins fall flat if mixed really well)

3b. At this stage add hot water and mix all. Don't make the batter watery, it should be such that you could scoop and add to the muffin liner not watery

4. Add chillies, corn, cilantro ( finely chopped) and fold it into the mixture

5. Preheat oven at 350 F and line the muffin tray with muffin liners

6. Pour the batter to 3/4 of the liners and for a few fill half, add feta cheese and then add batter again

7. Bake for close to 15-20 minutes or till the tooth pick comes clear when pricked! ( It needs to be sturdy, sometime due to the cheese melting, your stick might not come clear..so keep that in mind :D..experience ;))

Pointers

* the original recipe calls for 1 & 1/2 tbsp of sugar & a pinch of salt. But i felt the addition of so much sugar, leaves the muffin with an in-between taste as in neither spicy nor sweet. So i think, limiting the sugar to 1-2 tsp will be good enough, will avoid too much spiciness & enhance the flavor

** I like Feta cheese & since i had them i gave it a shot, it really didn't make much of difference to the taste, you could avoid it or include your fav cheese & increase the quantity too

*** You could replace water with egg. In my previous sponge cake, i had used water hot & did the same here..it could be plain water...You could go ahead & replace that with oil too as egg replacer!

You could also enjoy this by slicing it into 2 and spread butter between the pieces.. The closest description of the taste would be 'Khara Bun'..the spicy bun you would get in Iyengar bakeries! Close to that...not exactly :D

This is definitely worth giving it a shot..one its spicy, secondly not highly calorific :). Couldn't get better pictures, coz i made it in the evening!! :(

Serving : 4 big muffins

Duration : 40 minutes