Honey Sage Cornbread Muffins

Tonight’s dinner is one of our favorite fall meals, Brunswick Stew with Smoked Paprika. I wanted to make something other than our regular cornbread muffins so I spent a little time looking at recipes this morning and found several interesting ideas – Manchego and pickled jalapeno, sweet potato, and this recipe for Sage and Honey Skillet Cornbread. Like many Epicurious recipes, it is a bit over the top in fat and calories: an egg, a stick of butter and a cup of whole milk for a skillet of cornbread?

I like muffins for portion control so sprayed a muffin tin with olive oil cooking spray instead of using butter on a black skillet. I cut the butter in half, used egg substitute for the egg, and low fat buttermilk for the whole milk.

My version was a nice twist on a plain cornbread muffin.

Honey Sage Cornbread Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/4 cup egg substitute
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• Olive oil cooking spray

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. Spray a muffin tin with olive oil cooking spray.
3. Whisk the first 5 ingredients together in a large bowl to blend.
4. Whisk milk, honey, and egg in a medium bowl to blend. Add the melted butter.
5. Add the egg mixture to the cornmeal mixture and stir until just combined (do not over-mix; batter will be lumpy and runny).
6. Spoon batter into muffin tin.
7. Bake the muffins until browned around the edges and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 18-20 minutes.

Yield: 12 muffins
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes

I wasn't sure if the kids would like the sage, but the honey and sage together worked really well. They loved them!