Jammy Strawberry & Honey Cornbread Muffins

Honey cornbread muffins with strawberry puddle pockets . . .

These honey cornbread muffins are filled with strawberry puddles and make the perfect summer muffin. I crave them when strawberry season hits. The cornmeal gets very crispy and delicious and the strawberries melt into little jammy pockets on the inside. I like to put a little whipped ricotta on top and I’m in my happy place.

The starting point for these was a honey cornbread muffin. So, to make this into a healthy muffin, I added strawberries and a little freeze dried apple to the recipe. The strawberry takes the cornbread to a sweet summer place. The apple adds a touch of sweetness so that the muffins need less honey.

Nostalgia in a honey cornbread muffin

When I was little, my mother used to make us Jiffy cornbread muffins as a treat. Not very healthy, but those Jiffy cornbread muffins are so very delicious. When I had children, I wanted to pass down the memory. But with all the paranoia-inspiring press about the badness of processed foods, I did in fact get paranoid about the mysterious ingredients in the Jiffy cornbread mix. I decided I really should just try to make them myself. How hard could it be?

Not hard, as it turns out. Reaching for the mix box saved me maybe 5 minutes? Basically, the need to melt butter (easy with a microwave) and a couple of trips to the pantry. This recipe really is quite simple. It’s another good one for kids to help out with. Plus, making the mix myself means that I can make little tweaks to make the recipe a tad healthier.

For the little ones

This recipe is very popular with the little ones. As I’ve noted with my other muffin recipes, at the end of the day I make these, I throw whatever is left into a plastic bag and into the freezer it goes. When I (the kids) need a muffin, I just pop one from the freezer straight into the microwave about a minute to warm it up for breakfast on a difficult morning. Who can say no to a delicious warm muffin in the morning?

I also make a pancake variation of these which is a weekend pancake day favorite of the kids (recipe to come).

The strawberry & honey cornbread muffin trials

Because this is such a popular option around here, to get this recipe right, I made, like, a LOT of fruit-filled honey cornbread muffins. I tried freeze dried sweet corn (wasn’t properly crispy), I tried super sweet corn kernels (kids thoroughly despised the concept and best case scenario was they picked out all the kernels – worst case, they not-so-discreetly fed the muffin to our dogs), I tried freeze-dried apple with almost no honey (not favorful enough), I tried adding pureed strawberry (too wet and not enough strawberry flavor). . . there were SO MANY MUFFINS.

There is a slight disagreement in our family over the fruit aspect. My son and I prefer these with whole strawberries. They make little strawberry caves inside the muffins, and my son loves to eat the gooey strawberry bit. It ends up being a bit like a strawberry cobbler-muffin hybrid. My daughter prefers quartered strawberries – more even distribution of the strawberries and no caverns.

My husband prefers these muffins with raspberries over strawberries – the raspberries are a bit tarter which he likes as a contrast to the sweetness of the cornbread. It’s pretty easy to adjust the fruit to how you prefer it – details in the recipe below.

A note on ingredients

I use stone-ground white corn cornmeal when I make this recipe, because I like the coarser grind, because of the delicate and slightly sweeter taste of white corn, and because it preserves more of the corn’s nutrition – see this article if you want to get obsessive about your options here. Really though, pretty much any cornmeal will do.

Since I make these honey cornbread muffins with strawberries for the little ones, the only sweetener I use is honey and freeze-dried apple, – giving it an extra kick of fiber. For the apple, buying apple powder is the easiest option, but you can also buy freeze dried pieces and then turn them into powder in a blender. I would try to find a sweeter apple variety, because the point of the apple is to add some sweetness.

Final note, if you don’t have buttermilk on hand, you can substitute with milk and lemon. I do this all the time. Take a one-cup measure, and add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. Fill up the rest of the way to 1 cup with milk (whole milk is best, but any will do).

Despite the great family fruit debate, we had a lot of fun, we ate a lot of cornbread muffins, we have a well-tested recipe, and now we all need to go out for a walk (or two).

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