These cornbread muffins are savoury in taste, tender, vegan friendly and made using my homemade gluten free flour blend. They are perfect to serve during the holiday season where you can impress your guests with them!

With the holiday season just around the corner, I had to share with you one of my must try recipes.

Some of you may remember a while back when I first published the Northern style cornbread which is the sweet version to its southern counterpart.

There's always this big debate with the southern cornbread versus the northern cornbread. I'm partial to abit of sweetness therefore I'm a northern girl at heart.

While southern cornbread is more crumbly, savoury in taste and contains no flour, only cornbread.

Northern is more like a cake consistency, contains flour, is sweet, quite light and airy in texture.

For this recipe I merged both styles together, using cornmeal, my homemade flour blend and gave the would be southern version a makeover by incoporating some chives and vegan cheese.

The results are a light cake inspired corn muffin with a vegan twist. We like to add sweetcorn to ours too which always goes down a treat with the family.

Although this is an optional but recommended step.

Which cornmeal to use?

First of all, make sure you are buying cornmeal. There appears to be some confusion centred around "polenta" and "cornmeal".

Polenta is an Italian dish made from coarsely ground cornmeal. The consistency can be mushy or soft and creamy like porridge.

Some companies will label cornmeal as "polenta" which adds further to the confusion but as long as you know for sure that you are buying ground corn, then ignore the misleading name and purchase with confidence.

Just remember, polenta is a dish while cornmeal is an ingredient used to make a dish/recipe.

It's the ground stuff that you need, like what I use when making Caribbean dishes such as cornmeal porridge and so fourth.

Also, you want cornmeal that is YELLOW not WHITE because the yellow cornmeal is more bold in flavour and yields a nice golden colour.

In terms of what grain to use, you can choose between fine, medium and coarse. I use the fine cornmeal in my northern cornbread recipe because the texture is quite light.

These muffins are abit heavier, but certainly not dense by any means so I would recommend going with medium or a coarse grade of cornmeal (yes, it will cook thoroughly).

The steps

Steps 1-4 adding the wet ingredients to the dry ones

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4
Line a muffin pan with up to 12 muffin cups and set aside (you may not fill them all).
In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal, gluten free flour, cane sugar, baking powder, baking soda, pink salt and chives.
Stir the bowl with the dry ingredients to combine.
In a jug add the almond milk along with the apple cidar vinegar.
Stir the melted butter in with the almond milk and vinegar.

Steps 5-8 adding the sweetcorn, cheese and mixing the batter

Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients, in increments, using an electric hand mixer to mix until a smooth batter is achieved.
Use a spoon to evenly mix in the corn and vegan cheese.
Spoon the batter into the muffins cups.
Bake the muffins in the oven for 15-20 minutes (use a tooth pick or skewer to determine its readiness, it should come out clean when done). If the muffins brown too quickly reduce the heat to 160C/320F/gas mark 3 around the 12 minute mark.
Remove the muffins from the oven, allow to slightly cool down (until just warm) and serve accordingly.

Notes and tips

If possible purchase cornmeal that is "organic" or "non gmo".
Use olive oil if you want to instead of melted vegan butter.
This is the link to my Homemade Gluten Free Flour Blend.
Feel free to use any grain of cornmeal (fine, medium or coarse) although I do recommend using medium or coarse.
Feel free to add more additional herbs and spices if you wish.
If you want more of a cheesey taste, add atleast ¾ cups - 1 cup instead.
Use an electric mixer to stir everything together or you will notice some lumps.
Any leftover muffins need to be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Feel free to use another neutral tasting nut milk such as Cashew Milk instead.

Recipes containing cornmeal

Sweet Dairy Free Cornbread
Cornmeal Porridge with Hominy Corn(vegan)
Jamaican Cornmeal Pudding(vegan)
Jamaican Cornmeal Porridge(vegan)
Saltfish Turn Cornmeal
Haitian Akasan(vegan)
Trinidad Cou Cou (vegan)
Cornmeal Dumplings(vegan)

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Vegan Cornbread Muffins

Which cornmeal to use?

The steps

Notes and tips

Recipes containing cornmeal