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Sweet Jalapeno Cornbread Muffins

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My blood is Southern, but the kinship stops there.

Well, there and with a preference for Coke over Pepsi.  I still feel strongly about this even though I no longer drink soda… but I digress.

Being Southern, you would expect me to love cornbread, but I’ve gone through life avoiding it.  I never cared for the gritty, heavy feel and the taste didn’t draw me in.  My mom made it a lot when I was a kid.  My family even ate it in a bowl with milk poured over it.  Cornbread cereal?!  Blech.

Sweet Jalapeno Cornbread Muffins 1

When a friend requested that I make him sweet cornbread, I was intrigued.  What if cornbread could be more like dessert bread?  I love dessert!

First I had to “fix” the texture.  By using a mixture of cornmeal and flour, the grittiness is less noticeable.  I also used a hand mixer to cream together the oil, butter, sugar, and eggs to make the bread light and fluffy.  The brown sugar adds a deeper sweetness.  It’s noticeable, but it doesn’t overwhelm.

Sweet Jalapeno Cornbread Muffin bite

Those who know me won’t be surprised that I also threw in a couple of jalapenos.  I thrive on heat, and this addition helps to retain the southwest feel of a traditional cornbread.

These miiiight not be the healthiest muffins, but it’s not so bad.  And it’s summertime.  Take them to a picnic and share the calories deliciousness with your friends and family! 😉

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Sweet Jalapeno Cornbread Muffins

Sweet Jalapeno Cornbread Muffins

  • 1 C all-purpose flour
  • 1 C yellow corn meal
  • 3 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • ¼ C canola oil
  • ¼ C salted butter, softened
  • ½ C sugar
  • ¼ C brown sugar, packed
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 C unsweetened vanilla almond milk
  • 1-2 jalapeños, seeded and diced

Preheat oven to 350.

In a medium bowl, mix together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and cinnamon with a fork.

In a separate bowl, cream together butter, oil, eggs, and sugars with a hand mixer.

Add the creamed butter mixture and the milk to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Fold in the diced jalapenos (you may adjust the amount of jalapeño used to your taste, or leave it out all together).

Pour into greased muffin tins and bake 12-15 minutes, until golden.

Makes 12 muffins.

Note: These could easily be made vegan using Earth Balance and egg replacer or flax eggs.

***

Despite having found a cornbread I enjoy, I still refuse to pour milk over it like cereal.

Do you like the food of your “people”?

If your favorite foods determined your ethnicity, what would your heritage be?  I’d be Italian.  Or Indian.

Comments

  3. I love cornbread, especially the sweet flavor plus the heat of the jalapeno. In all honesty, I only like Chinese food if my mom cooks it. My husband claims that he’s eaten less Chinese since we’ve been together because I refuse to eat at Chinese restaurants! So I guess I wouldn’t be Chinese based on my food preference…

    • It is SO hard to find good Chinese food. There’s only one good place in ATL. – Gu’s.

    • I’d just leave it out – it’s sweet enough with the brown sugar. Or… I bet that raisins would be interesting here…

  6. These look so pretty!! I can definitely see them on a pretty summer picnic. Ever heard of Swiss Cheese Fondue? Melted cheese in a huge pot in the middle of the table and everyone holds a fork with little pieces of bread and stirrs like crazy – fork then goes directly into the mouth. It’s a fun winter-swiss-tradition and I LOVE it though it is so unhealthy I can not even believe it. Especially since you drink a ton of white wine on the side and kirsch (high booze) is in the cheese mixture too. It’s all about balance, right? 🙂 ugh, sorry for all my babbling!!

    • Of course! Americans love fondue. We have a chain dedicated to it (The Melting Pot). But I know the real Swiss version must be 100x better.

  7. I don’t drink soda either.. I’ve even lived in the same town that birthed pepsi and can say, wholeheartedly, that pepsi is VILE! Coke wins. Though I still won’t drink it 😉 Bring me some cornbread?

  8. See, I love cornbread, but not the super dense, crazy sweet kind. I like mine to be lighter, fluffy. And I can’t even recall the last soda I had. Maybe 2 years now? And yes, Coke. Everything is a Coke 😉

  9. This sounds SO similar to the kind my mom makes. She makes a sweet cornbread instead of the usual. Her is less flaky and more like cake texture than the traditional cornbread texture. It is pretty amazing!

    I don’t drink soda either, but I am a Dr. Pepper girl. Ef them both haha.

  11. I love this combination of sweet and spicy cornbread muffins!
    Well, there is this Sri Lankan dessert called “wattalapam” that is just so so GREAT! My mom makes a wonderful version of it!
    My other food loves are mostly Indian too…what is your fav Indian restaurant in Atlanta?

    • Wattalapam is a newone on me! I’ll have to look out for it.

      Best Indian in ATL is Cardamom Hill – it’s Kerala-style.

  12. I adore cornbread in pretty much any form! And I’m all for spicy, so I think it’s safe to say that I need to make these at some point.
    And the food of my (Canadian) people would have to be poutine and maple syrup…both of which I enjoy 😉

    And yes, 100% coke. Coke Zero tends to happen for me every week or two 😉

  13. Um, yeah, I’m the cornbread lover here! While I am a Southern gal, I am NOT a fried chicken girl so I’m pretty sure I’m getting voted off the island. 😉

    Mediterranean foods are by far my favorite. I’m also a Mexican lover.

  16. I do love southern food, with cajun (still southern…kinda) being my favorite (and the food of “my people”!). I haven’t drank coke since high school, but I still stand firm on coke over pepsi in any verbal battle. Because you know I have to have an opinion on everything!

  17. THESE LOOK SO GOOD! I love anything that tastes like cornbread. Might have to swap out the AP flour for GF but hopefully will still work. “My people” love to eat and especially love to eat matzah ball soup –>the way to my heart <3

  21. I’m biased, bc I love cornbread. BUT there’s this restaurant in Denver, CO that makes skillet cornbread they’re famous for, and it’s cooked in an iron skillet, it’s pretty sweet but has a ton of jalapenos and a bit of cheese in it. The top is super crispy (think the muffin top you love) and it is to DIE for! Oh my!

    • There’s a place in Napa that does that too! Muffin top-likeness and all. What’s the Denver place called? I’m going to be there in Nov!

  22. I love cornbread, my mom always made it with chili in the winter. After moving to Kentucky I found a new love of spoon bread. It’s like a corn bread casserole type thing. It’s one of my favorite sides served at my boyfriends families thanksgiving. Have you ever tried cornbread with maple syrup? Swoon.

    • I should make it with your chili recipe this week. 😉

      I have had spoon bread… it wasn’t my favorite… but I have a textue thing.

  23. I love me some cornbread. I make something similar to this with chili on a cold winter night. I don’t have brown sugar, but I do add some shredded chedda to make it betta 😉 and of course the jalapeno. I will have to give this a try when it gets cold out!

  25. Cornbread has always been a thing of mystery for me. I remember growing up, my great grandmother would always bake some on Sunday afternoons to go along with our expansive spread after church…complete with all the southern comforts: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, fresh hand-snapped green beans (yum!), and those rolls you buy at the store that come in a cardboard tray and have three little humps on them (omg, she would butter every inch of those suckers and then pop them in the oven…and in my opinion that is the ONLY way they should be eaten! ;)) ANYWAY!! Please excuse my ADD moment! So…I was talking about cornbread wasn’t I? Yeah, THAT she would make homemade in a cast iron skillet and it would have this amazingly thick brown crust on the top, bottom, and edges…and of course, we would butter the hell out that thing! The trouble is, I’ve never found any cornbread since those days that even attempts to compare. They’re always too dry, too crumbly, too…not my great grandmother’s! Honestly, when it comes down to it, I’d rather have a biscuit…a big ol’ flaky buttery biscuit! YUM!

    I’d like to say that I accept the foods of “my people”…BBQ, fried green tomatoes, fruit cobbler, and of course there’s the biscuits! 😉 But if my favorite foods (or the ones I eat most often) determined my ethnicity, I’d definitely be Japanese! Now if only I could get the hang of chopsticks!

    • OMG – that grocery store bread with butter is total trashy comfort food. I forgot about those!!! I was such a picky kid that I would only eat that, the skin of the fried chicken, and a salad covered in ranch (like more ranch than salad). And dessert – banana pudding with ‘nilla wafers! 😉

      Japanese?! I’m actually suprised you said that. Not sure why…

      • Omg, fried chicken skin dipped in honey was my FAVE growing up! And I went through a huge banana pudding phase when I was like 23…I made it for every family get together for like a year! Think I got burnt out on it though because I haven’t had it since! Why do I get so obsessed about certain foods and then ruin them for myself? Lol

        I only say Japanese NOW…the man-friend and I have been eating a LOT of sushi lately! We went to that huge buffet a couple of weeks ago and then earlier this week he took me to a place called “Sushi Train” where little plates come around by the tables on a conveyor belt and you just pick what you want! It was fun, but we filled up WAY too fast…and then I kept seeing plates I wanted to try after that, but I was too stuffed! Lol

        • Ohhhh… did your mom make honey-mayo? Just honey mixed with mayo as a dipping sauce. I don’t want to think about how much of that I ate.

          There’s apparently a sushi place like there here somewhere. I’m totally intrgued.

          • Well, we DID have homemade honey mustard…which was really just honey, mayo, and a tiiiiiny bit of mustard! We used it for a dip for our chicken nuggets…aka, “mystery” nuggets! *shudder* Lol

    • Not boring… your ethnicity would be “gym rat.” It’s a culture all it’s own, no? 😉

  28. How do you do it? I mean seriously where do these AMAZING mouth watering recipes come from! I need to channel my inner Laura when cooking! Thanks for sharing! Have an amazing week 😉 Love + Shine CourtStar

  29. I do like cornbread but that’s one of the few southern things that I like (others would be fried green tomatoes and boiled peanuts).

    I would be some sort of Asian or Mediterranean if foods determined my ethnicity.

    • Ewwww… boiled peanuts! Haha. I normally don’t like fried green tomatoes, but had an awesome rendition at Bocado and changed my mind.

  32. I think this might be my favorite recipe of yours, and I’m not even Southern. I love the addition of jalapeño; it sounds like the perfect accompaniment to the sweet.
    I’m Irish, and I do love potatoes, although I could totally pass on the corn beef.

  33. Hi,
    I’m really enjoying your recipes and blog!
    You listed almond milk in the ingredients for the muffins, but there was no mention in the directions about where/how to include it. I’m halfway through the recipe and stumped, lol. Can you shed some light?
    Thanks!

    • Hi! You add it when you add the wet ingredients to the dry. Soryy it isn’t clear – I’ll edit. Thanks for pointing that out!!

Trackbacks

  1. […] spent fun time in the kitchen making 72 of my Sweet Jalapeno Cornbread Muffins to take to a men’s shelter for a chili dinner.  It was fun to do – I love baking for […]

  2. […] a terrible southerner.  I don’t like okra, fried green tomatoes, or cornbread (except for these Sweet Jalapeno Cornbread muffins).  That said, I will use cornmeal in recipes.  I’ve used it for protein pancakes before, […]

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