GF Blue Corn Sage Muffins

I'm not a vegetarian.  Never have been, though I was sort of a de-facto vegetarian in college.  And, Spouse 1.0 has a horror of the word "vegetarian".  It brings back memories of when he was a teenager and his parents abruptly went vegetarian and force fed him eggplant in 101 guises.

So, we won't tell him that this recipe came from a vegetarian e-zine.  He still has a hard time understanding that a vegetarian recipe that doesn't contain eggplant can be a yummy supplement to a carnivorous diet.  It's probably a PTSD thing.

Sort of like me & my mom's attempt to force feed me hillbilly delicacies. And, due to your delicate sensibilities, I won't tell you what those were.

But, back to the corn muffins.

They looked really good, especially with the adorable corn husk treatment.  I have corn husks.  Leftover from when I decided I was going to make tamales. (I never have, obviously.)

Problem is, the recipe was glutenacious and used cow products. But really, that's not a problem.  It was fairly easy to convert to GF and to sub in some lovely goat products we had on hand.

So, with special thanks to Vegetarian Times, we have this GF adaptation:

GF Blue Corn Sage Muffins

 Ingredients

• Several dried corn husks, soaked in warm water until pliable, lightly dried with paper towels.  I also oiled my hands with avocado oil and lightly rubbed them.
• 6 ounces organic butter
• 50 grams organic cane sugar
• 8.9 ounces of home-grown egg from kind friends, lightly beaten. (About 5 almost medium-large eggs.)
• 4 ounces goat milk
• 3.5 oz. goat gouda, grated
• 3.5 oz. raw goat ricotta - or generic goat cheese crumbles
• 120 grams GF all-purpose flour (e.g., Trader Joe's)
• 124 grams blue cornmeal (I like Los Chileros)
• 2 ½ tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 3/4 tsp xanthan gum
• About 1 TBSP fresh sage, finely minced

 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Grease 12-muffin tin with avocado oil.  Tear corn husks lengthwise into strips about an inch wide at widest point. Lay two strips overlapping in an ‘X’ in each muffin cup, with long ends jutting out above pan. In addition, line a custard cup with 1 muffin liner, and spray with olive oil. 
2. Whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, xanthan gum, and sage.
3. Cream butter and sugar with mixer. Add eggs, milk and cheeses, mixing well after each addition.
4. Spoon dry mixture into batter about one-third at a time, mixing just until combined after each addition.
5. Scoop most of the batter into prepared muffin tin.  This is tricky with corn husks sticking up all over the place. They don't really want to form muffin cups. But, it's worth the effort.  Trim off the tops of the husks that stick up too much.  Wet fingers and smooth the tops of the muffins, adjusting the amount of goo in each muffin cup until they're more or less equivalent.  Place extra batter in prepared custard cup.
6. Bake for 20 to 24 minutes, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean and muffin springs back when lightly touched.

Almost as pretty as the ones from Vegetarian Times