I love the taste and texture of corn bread, and corn muffins are very close, but there’s always like 5 sticks of butter in those cornbread recipes, and while I decidedly like butter, I think there is a limit before the result is more of a garden variety of ‘fried food’ as opposed to a bread or muffin (don’t even mention what it might do to the inside of you) So that needed to be fixed, but I did not want to sacrifice the awesome moist crumb that so often is characteristic of buttery muffins, so what’s a hungry girl to do? First of, I asked myself, is it really the butter that makes them moist? I mean, have you mashed a banana lately? Or cut up some peaches? There is quite some liquid in there, so off to the kitchen we go and since I had frozen peaches on hand…
I know, I known… Let’s back it up a minute here, I know what you’re thinking, ‘does she know it’s summer?’ Ehhm, yes, it’s quite hot, so… but here’s how it happened: I couldn’t resist to buy one of those whole pecks of ripe peaches at the farmers market the other week, it smelled soooooooo good! I know you would have bought it too. And since they were only a day away from spoiling, I had to chop and freeze most of them right away. (For the record, I did have some fresh peaches on the side). So there I am with my frozen, sliced and chopped peaches, and heck yes, I was going to use them. But drop the butter, use dairy instead, yes maybe the fromage blanc I made, to keep it soft and moist without the butter.
After some near fails (the ones that collapsed totally the moment they came out of the oven) I nailed it and here is your healthy, yet moist and airy corn muffin with peaches. Yes it is both low fat AND low in sugar. I think you just need to go over to the kitchen and try a batch yourself!
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cup fromage blanc, made from whole milk*
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup cornmeal
- 1 to 1 1/2 cups chopped frozen peaches, bite size chunks
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 extra large egg (or two smaller ones)
- 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp turbinado or granulated coconut sugar
- 1 tbsp coconut oil, liquid
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp orange zest, (if using dried reduce to 1/2, or you could use natural orange essence or flavor)
* I have also successfully made this using half greek yogurt, half sour cream, about 3/4 cup each, plus or minus
Directions
- Preheat oven to 400ºF.
- Remove the peaches from the freezer.
- In a large mixing bowl, mix the flour, cornmeal, baking powder and baking soda and 1/4 cup sugar and set aside.
- In a separate large bowl, mix the egg(s), fromage blanc (or yogurt and sour cream), milk, coconut oil, orange zest until well blended.
- Add the wet mixture to the bowl with the flour, stir just until combined, then stir in the peach pieces and divide among 12 prepared muffin cups. (Line them for easy cleanup)
- Bake 24 to 30 minutes or until the tops are beginning to brown and the center is set.
- Let cool in the muffin cups for 15 minutes before digging in (it seems to help the muffins not stick to the paper liners like mad), then you may devour them and claim the muffin tin only made
119 muffins or finish cooling on a rack and share. Enjoy!
© 2012 SimpleHealthyHomemade