Lenten Lunch

For years and years the churches in town have joined together to hold a series of Wednesday luncheons during Lent—a short service and a simple meal. Today, the first day of Lent--Ash Wednesday--was our church's day to host the meal. This menu for this first lunch is always the same—vegetable soup, cornbread and dessert, just right for our cold, rainy weather today.

For a long time I've made cornbread as my contribution. This year's committee chairman asked that we all make corn muffins. This recipe that I've used for years, but I'd never made muffins from it. Turns out it works just fine. I shortened the baking time to 25 minutes. Muffin tins are not all the same size, so watch yours and bake until golden brown.

CORNY CORNBREAD

1/2 cup vegetable oil (plus extra for greasing the pan)
1-3/4 cup self-rising corn meal mix
1 cup cream-style corn (I use a 10-oz pkg.Cope's frozen white corn)
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Generously grease a cast-iron skillet. Preheat pan in oven. (I've used a cast iron skillet, but have also used a 7x11-inch baking pan, sprayed with PAM. Either works.)

Stir all ingredients together in a large bowl until combined. Pour batter into preheated cast-iron skillet. (I don't preheat the baking pan sprayed with PAM. It burns.) 

Bake for about 30 minutes, until golden brown.  Makes 12-14 muffins.


I made two batches of this recipe to get 30 muffins today. Muffin tin sizes have gotten bigger over the years. My oldest tin has cups that measure 2-1/2-inches. My tin that is only 30 years old has cups that measure 2-3/4-inches. I think newer ones might be slightly larger still. With my oldest tin, I got 16 muffins from one recipe. With the one that was slightly bigger, I got 14 muffins. Worked fine this time because that gave me 30 muffins total. Exactly what I needed.

I'm thinking that making them into muffins would make them extra easy to freeze, so you could pull out just two or three as you need them. I know the recipe freezes well.

I was very tempted to take them 29 muffins. A hot buttered muffin would have tasted awfully good this morning before I packed them up to go.