Thanksgiving Recipes - Part 2, Cornbread

Thanksgiving wouldn't be complete without side dishes or salads or soups(maybe?), but there is a staple that is such a...well, staple that it's often included without even needing mention. I speak, of course, of rolls. Either soft yeast dinner rolls or cornbread skillets, a table isn't complete without bread.

"Challah" atch'yo girl!

I mean, seriously. In the food world, bread is amazing. Everybody loves it, and it costs - like - not even a dollar to make a few loaves. The world has been shaped and even some cultures are undeniably recognized by their breads. The French have the baguette, the Jews have Challah, the British have scones, and we have...Wonder! Yay!

My point is that we can't have Thanksgiving without bread of some kind, and in Culinary school I have cooked a lot of bread. Not to my chagrin, mind you! I love bread - and I love it even more when any skinny/fat girl says "Eeew bread is so bad for you!"

Bitch, please. If this stuff was really that bad for me, I'd be dead in a ditch somewhere. I love bread so much more violently out of my hatred for those girls.

(By the way, for those who don't know, I define a Skinny/Fat girl as a girl that doesn't want to lose weight in a normal healthy way such as eating right and exercising over an extended period. No, this is the person that takes drops under the tongue and eats a 500 calorie-a-day diet to lose 30 lbs in 30 days - which just seems FREAKISHLY unhealthy to me. I also define that bitch as the 20-lb-dripping-wet-ho that says "Oh no Tiffany, you're not fat - I'm fat!" THOSE are skinny/fat girls. I'll probably reference those more in my blogs in the future. Anyway.)

They're so shiny with butter! They almost look plastic!

But, no, I love bread. All kinds. This particular bread dish I would like to share with you is the twist on a classic: Jalapeno Cornbread Muffins! It screams cornbread classico, but with a bit of a twist. This recipe is straight out of my notebook from Culinary school, and the best part is that it's only a tad spicy, for those sensitive folks out there.

Of course, feel free to take this cornbread muffin recipe and make it your own. The beautiful part of this recipe is that you can pretty much add anything, with a few minor adjustments here and there, which we will discuss later. But you can add any little ingredient to this recipe and make it your own - and let it become your new Thanksgiving Tradition for your family to enjoy through generations. And don't worry, nobody has to know that you got the recipe from a 23-year-old girl with chipping toenail polish.

Jalapeno Cornbread Muffins
Muffin Method

• 12 oz cornmeal
• 12 oz pastry/A.P. flour(mixed if possible)
• 3 oz sugar
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 24 fl. oz buttermilk
• 6 eggs
• 8 fl. oz oil
• 6 oz corn kernels
• 6 oz grated cheese(we used cheddar/pepperjack)
• 4 oz jalapenos, brunoise

(Please measure via weight using a scale. It will work out SO MUCH BETTER.) Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Prepare your muffin tins by greasing the cups or by lining them with paper liners. Seed and finely dice the jalapenos, and set aside. If buttermilk is not readily available, you can easily create it by combining the necessary amount of milk with a few teaspoons of rice wine vinegar(my personal favorite) and letting it sit for at least 15 minutes at room temperature on the counter.

Don't ask me who's in the background. I forgot.

Combine all dry ingredients together in a large bowl, ideally via sifting. Whisk together the buttermilk, cheese, eggs and oil. Keep the corn kernels and jalapenos to the side, as they will be mixed in last. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add the liquid ingredients.

Stir a maximum of 12 times, scraping the bottom of the bowl. You don't want to get rid of lumps. You only want to combine the ingredients - they don't call muffins 'quickbreads' for no reason! Fold in the corn kernels and jalapenos right at the very end, mixing a minimal amount of times.

Portion the batter into the prepared amount of tins as quickly as you can. Time is important, because baking soda and baking powder are time-sensitive, and the longer you wait, the less fluffy-muffiny-goodness you have. Therein, make sure that EVERYTHING is ready, because you don't want your batter sitting and going flat while you prepare your muffin tins. So do be deliberate. An ice cream scoop is ideal for portioning quickly, but two large spoons will do just fine in a pinch.

Bake at 400 for about 10 minutes then lower the oven to 350 until done, about another five minutes, if that. You basically just want to watch until they are GBD, or "golden-brown delicious" around the edges. Test with a toothpick, but be brief when you do. Every time you open your oven, you lower the temperature and change the pressure of the baking conditions, which can harm your final product, and that's not what we want.

Once removed from the oven, make sure to let them rest in the pan for at least 10 minutes before overturning them. After that little period of rest, you can take them out of their tins and let them hang out on the counter, ideally on a cooling rack. I understand that not everybody has them, but they're not even ten bucks at a local Walmart, and really worth the investment for superior baked goods - or at least baked goods that can cool faster and go in your mouth sooner.

Ignore the red stuff. Or not.

Serve these warm with a compound butter of your choice. These are seriously awesome.

For those of you who don't already know, a compound butter is just butter that's been whipped together with flavorings such as lemon juice, minced garlic, herbs and spices, or other tasty things to make everything seem a tad more special. My personal favorite is honey butter, which is so easy and so tasty that you'll want to keep a batch or two on hand in your fridge for bagels and toast. Also, most compound butters freeze perfectly, so they can be made in advance in blocks. For an extra kick, pipe them on a plate with a star tip to get that "Wow" factor.