Last night I made one of our favorite crockpot meals, Chicken -n- Biscuits. While I had the oven cranked up, I decided to pop in one of my favorite things to have for lunch. Corndog Muffins! My husband thought this was a hoot. He thought I was making cornbread muffins for supper and so when he saw hotdogs peaking out of the muffins, he just about cracked up! (He doesn't know what he's missing!) These little jewels are so tasty. The combination of sweet cornbread and salty hotdogs really is yummy. I especially love that in the morning, when I'm tired and can't dream up a thing to take with me to the office for lunch, I can grab these out of the freezer, stick them in a little container, and out the door I go. At lunchtime, I just pop them in the microwave for a few seconds to warm them.
I use my favorite homemade cornbread muffin recipe to make these Corndog Muffins. This recipe is one that I got from the Hillbilly Housewife site. The main recipe is for plain muffins which you can add fruit or chocolate chips to, and she has a variation in the fine print for corbread muffins. These are outstanding! My family really loves sweet cornbread like Jiffy cornmuffins and this recipe is a close replica. Whenever I make cornmuffins, I just usually put hotdogs in half of the muffins (because it seems like we never eat them all without some of them getting stale), bake them, bag up and freeze the corndog muffins and I'm all set!
I think these would work great for kids lunches or even for taking to potlucks (for some reason my kids never could find anything simple enough for them at potlucks since they weren't crazy about casseroles) and these would be big kid pleasers! If you are packing them in a kids lunchbox, maybe take them out of the freezer the night before, warm a little in the microwave, wrap in foil or pack in a thermos and they would lunchroom ready!
Here's how I made Corndog Muffins AT HOME MY WAY:
Corndog Muffins
- 1 cup all-purpose flour (unbleached is best)
- 1 cup yellow cornmeal (not self-rising)
- 1/3 cup sugar (white, granulated)
- 1 Tablespoon baking powder (not baking soda)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup milk
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup oil (I used canola)
- hotdogs - uncooked
Instructions:
In a medium sized bowl, mix all of the dry ingredients.
In a 2-cup measuring cup, add 1 cup milk. Add 1/4 cup oil to the milk. Plop in the egg. (I find its easiest to measure liquid ingredients as I go - all in the same measuring cup.)
Blend really well to fully mix in the egg (I use a fork or a whisk).
Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir just until moist.
Spray a muffin tin.
Fill the muffin tins half full with the muffin batter, top with about four little hotdog chunks (you can also just cut the hotdogs into thirds and put a one-third section in each muffin but I found it easier to eat the muffin if I didn't have to bite off the hotdog - it made less mess!).
Top each with the remaining muffin batter.
Place in preheated oven (350 ° for about 20 minutes or until browning).
I remove them to a cooling rack before bagging them up.
Gina
This shows topping with batter, ready for the oven!