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Zante Muffins
1/2 cup butter 3/4 cup sugar 3 eggs 1 1/2 cups milk 2 cups corn meal 1 cup flour 1 teaspoon salt 5 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 cup currants Cream the butter; add sugar, gradually, eggs well beaten, and milk; then add dry ingredients mixed and sifted, and currants. Bake in buttered individual tins.
A cornmeal muffin enriched with butter and eggs, sweeter than most nineteenth-century corn breads. The original gives no oven temperature or baking time, which is the one thing you need to supply.
- Oven and timeBake at 400F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops spring back and a skewer comes out clean. Corn-heavy batters brown before they set, so judge by the centre rather than the colour.
- Currants"Zante" is the currant itself, not a place the muffin comes from: Zante currants are small dried grapes from the Greek island, sold today simply as dried currants. Do not substitute fresh red or black currants.
- Baking powderFive teaspoons to three cups of dry ingredients is high by current standards. Period baking powder lost strength on the shelf and was generally single-acting rather than double-acting, so a modern powder will do more with less; about 4 teaspoons should give ample lift, and cutting it back reduces the risk of a chemical aftertaste.
- Cornmeal grindUse fine or medium yellow cornmeal, not coarse polenta grind. The batter goes straight into the tins with no soaking or resting, so a coarse meal will stay gritty.
- Individual tins"Buttered individual tins" means a standard muffin pan or separate small tins, filled about two-thirds. Butter them generously; the sugar in this batter sticks.
- MixingCreaming the butter and sugar first, then folding in the sifted dry ingredients, is the method as written. Stop as soon as the flour disappears, or the crumb tightens.
- YieldAbout 15 to 18 muffins in a standard pan. They are best warm and stale quickly, as most butter-and-cornmeal breads do.