An easy, high altitude recipe for sweet, buttery and moist cornbread muffins. They’re delicious served warm with butter and honey, and are just perfect alongside a hot bowl of soup or chili on a cool day.
You might also love this blueberry cornmeal cobbler, blackberry cornbread cake, and whole wheat cornmeal pancakes.
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Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Quick and Easy. You only need a few minutes and basic pantry ingredients to whisk up the batter and bake your muffins.
Moist and Buttery. Good cornbread muffins shouldn’t be dry and crumbly, right? The butter, milk and sour cream in today’s recipe ensures the muffins will have a moist, tender texture that’s so comforting when they’re warm from the oven.
A Little Sweet. These muffins are sweet, but not too sweet. Perfect with a bowl of spicy pork green chili!
See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.
Ingredients
- Butter. The butter adds a rich buttery flavor as well as moisture. I use unsalted butter, so if your butter is salted, you should omit the extra salt in the recipe.
- Granulated Sugar. Sugar adds sweetness and moisture.
- Eggs. Eggs give the bread structure.
- Milk + Sour Cream. Keeps the bread moist and flavorful. Be sure to use whole milk and full-fat sour cream for a rich flavor.
- Cornmeal. Yellow cornmeal gives this cornbread its pretty yellow color and savory corn flavor. Don’t confuse cornmeal with corn flour or corn starch, which are completely different ingredients.
- Flour. All-purpose flour gives the bread strength and structure so it doesn’t crumble apart.
- Baking Powder. This is the leavening agent, which gives the bread its rise.
- Salt. Enhances the flavors.
- Pecans. I’ve made these muffins many times over the years, but my favorite version was pecan cornbread muffins. Finely chopped pecans added to the batter add a wonderful nutty flavor and crunch that’s really, really good.
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Grease a standard 12-cup muffin pan with non-stick baking spray.
- In a bowl, whisk together the melted butter and sugar. Add the eggs, and whisk until smooth, then whisk in the milk and sour cream.
- Separately, combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder and salt (and the chopped pecans, if using). Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and whisk for 10-15 seconds until well combined.
- Divide the batter between the cups. Bake for about 16-17 minutes, just until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Remove the muffins from the pan and set on a cooling rack. Cool for 10 minutes, then serve warm. These cornbread muffins are delicious with butter and honey or pure maple syrup.
Be sure to read all of my BAKING FAQs where I discuss ingredients, substitutions and common baking questions, so that you can be successful in your own baking!
Frequently Asked Questions
Yellow cornmeal has a bolder, sweeter flavor and a coarser texture, while white cornmeal tends to be less sweet, and may be ground a little more finely. I prefer using yellow cornmeal, but you can use either in this recipe. And what about polenta? It’s nearly the same thing as yellow cornmeal, but it’s ground much more coarsely, so that the cooked polenta has more structure to it, rather than a mushy texture.
I’m not sure. The sugar not only adds sweetness, but also moisture. Reducing the sugar, or replacing it with a non-sugar substitute could change the chemical structure of the bread, and I’m not sure how it would turn out.
Yes, refer to my classic cornbread recipe in this post.
Cornbread muffins are best served warm from the oven for the most soft and tender texture. Keep the leftover muffins in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days. To soften them again, just rewarm them in the microwave at 50% power for 30-60 seconds.
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High Altitude Cornbread Muffins
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter, melted
- ⅔ cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- ¾ cup whole milk
- ½ cup full-fat sour cream
- 1 cup yellow cornmeal
- 1 cup all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- ½ cup pecans, finely chopped, optional
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Grease a standard 12-cup muffin pan with non-stick baking spray.
- In a bowl, whisk together the melted butter and sugar. Add the eggs, and whisk until smooth, then whisk in the milk and sour cream.
- Separately, combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder and salt (and the chopped pecans, if using). Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and whisk for 10-15 seconds until well combined.
- Divide the batter between the cups. Bake for about 16-17 minutes, just until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Remove the muffins from the pan and set on a cooling rack. Cool for 10 minutes, then serve warm. These cornbread muffins are delicious with butter and honey or pure maple syrup.
5800 feet here in Colorado. I made the recipe as printed, except I used 3/4 cup buttermilk instead of whole milk, and lowfat sour cream because that’s what was on hand. It came out perfectly at 375 degrees and 18 minutes….12 muffins in foil liners. Perfectly moist, sweet, yum!
These are the best corn muffins ever! I reduced sugar to 1/2 cup & made 3 ways. Plain, blueberry with lemon zest & demerara sugar topping, and cheddar chive with aleppo pepper and grey salt topping. I pushed the additions into the batter after I scooped and made 4 of each kind. Just divine. I don’t think they are going to last until morning 😂
Delicious muffins @ 6,680’ – used Greek yogurt in place of sour cream & 2% milk. No liners needed – they released easily from sprayed pan.
Excellent muffins – we loved them!
I made this recipe tonight and was very pleased: easy to make, great flavor, and nice texture. I will definitely make these again.