Famous Dave's Cornbread Muffins

I heard on the radio that Famous Dave had a new cookbook, "Famous Dave's Barbecue Party Cookbook".  I heard it had some amazing recipes in it.  Did I really need a new cookbook?  Need is such a strong word.  Did I truly need the cookbook?  No.  Did I want it?  Yes.  The only other BBQ cookbooks I have are "How to Grill" by Steven Raichlen, which really isn't a BBQ book and "Grilling and Barbecue" by Cook's Illustrated which is more a guidebook than cookbook.  So, maybe I did need that cookbook after all?

If you've never heard of Famous Dave, I encourage you to read his history.  I find it heartwarming and fascinating.  Though I've never met him, I've seen him in many interviews and he seems like a simple, down-to-earth guy who loves his family and loves his food.  I've seen him on several FoodNetwork shows and always pull for him!  If he's in a restaurant and there's a child there with a birthday, he'll even draw the Famous Dave's Pig for them!

Meet Dave

Lucky me I am an Amazon Prime subscriber and my cookbook arrived in just one day!  What to try first?!

Well, this week the good folks at Wholly Guacamole sent me a cooler full of great stuff!  I decided tonight's menu would be pork enchiladas and what goes better with enchiladas than cornbread?  And as luck would have it there was a recipe for cornbread muffins in the book.

Those of you who frequent this blog know that just about a week ago I made cornbread.  It was really good and I swore off of boxed mixes as a result.  Let me tell you this, no offense to Marjorie Johnson or Danny Klecko, but Famous Dave's recipe won hand's down.  OH MY GOD these were good!

Let's start with the ingredients.  Unlike the cornbread I made last week, I did not have all the ingredients for these in my house.  For these muffins you need, self-rising flour, Jiffy Yellow Cake Mix, yellow cornmeal, stone-ground yellow cornmeal, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, buttermilk, oil an egg and Hellman's Mayonnaise.  None of the ingredients were odd or out of the ordinary, I just don't stock Jiffy Yellow Cake Mix (I didn't even know they made it!).  And I was out of buttermilk so I had to pick that up too.

We had been to Farmer's Market that morning and got some beautiful and very fragrant jalapenos so I added one of those to the mix as well.

The dry ingredients are mixed together.

Then the wet are mixed and added to the dry, just until all the ingredients are wet.  You can immediately see the batter start to bubble as the baking powder meets the buttermilk.  I knew these were going to be good!

Dave says to put them in 12 muffin cups.  I filled mine about 3/4 full and still got 18 muffins out of the batch.

They are beautiful!

But I think Famous Dave lied when he said the recipe "Delightfully serves a party of 12."  There is no way this serves 12.  I had 2 and a half of them and wanted more!  I had to bag them up and put them away so I wouldn't eat all of them!  I think his comment that these muffins are "deliciously addicting" is more accurate.

They have a nice crunch top and a soft interior that melts in your mouth.  That must be the cake mix?  The diced jalapeno gave them just the right bite but didn't overwhelm the sweet corn flavor.  I cannot get over how good these are.  I'm writing this the morning after making them.  They are in a bag on my kitchen counter and I'm trying to decide how I can have them for breakfast!

The recipe included a recipe for honey butter.  Next time I'm going to make that too and brushing it over the top of warm muffins.  I may eat the whole batch!