Cornbread Muffins

 

Today’s recipe comes with a book inspiration.  The story takes place in Appalachia in the 1930’s when a group of librarians (mostly women) rode horses or mules to remote areas to bring people books.

Here’s my Goodreads review:

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is set in a fascinating time in history, 1930s Appalachia when women mounted on horses or mules brought mobile libraries (with books and local scrapbooks including recipes and household tips) to people isolated in rural communities. The book also followed the rare "blue skinned" people on Appalachia who had an extremely rare disorder turning their skin blue (I looked it up and it is historically documented). All in all in was an interested, but sad read (there are many themes of abuse and starvation). Though overall, there was a hopeful ending to the story.

View all my reviews

One thing I learned in reading the book was that the “book women” also carried scrapbooks which included household tips and recipes and were the way that people chose to “pay” the librarians for bringing them books.

The cool part was that one of these scrapbooks was partially digitized in conjunction with this novel.  It was really neat to see some of the actual recipes that were included in these scrapbooks, so of course, I needed to try a vintage recipe and decided to give the cornbread muffins a try.

Now, I have made cornbread muffins before (my Copycat Jiffy Muffins) and was surprised that these were made entirely of cornmeal instead of the cornmeal/flour mix I was accustomed to.  

And well…they weren’t our favorite.  Since they’re made entirely of cornmeal, these are quite dense and don’t have the light sweetness that I associate with modern cornbread muffins.  They are definitely something that I would crumble into chili (that’s how I served them) or another saucy entree.

Cornbread Muffins

Recipe from the Book Woman Scrapbook

1 egg

3 cups buttermilk

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 cups cornmeal.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and grease a 12-cup muffin tin liberally with nonstick spray.

Whisk together the buttermilk and egg.  Stir in the salt, baking soda, and cornmeal until smooth.

Divide the batter evenly in the muffin tin.  Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until the muffins are cooked through and tops are browned.

Cool slightly in the tins, then run a knife around the edges to remove.