Buttery secret muffins for a chilly evening

This month Secret Recipe Club has been brought you by Robin of Penny-Pinching Provisions.
When I got assigned Robin's blog as my monthly virtual cookbook, I started going through her posts to look for something that would make me want to cook right away. Can't deny that her Babka's recipes were pretty tempting (what about this Nutella Babka for instance??).

But the time went by, days after days and I had to plan the recipe in my weekly schedule. Still Babka was the choice, until a friend reminded me of a long forgotten video-game... I guess I am about to melt with my chair from the amount of hours I'm spending on it.
These are the occasions when I am really thankful for my pressure cooker. Man I do love that pot! The weather got quite fresh during the latter days too so I prepared myself a lovely meat stew that was worth at least 3 meals; the Babka project was slipping away...
What would go best with the stew? Corn muffins!

I remembered having seen a recipe for them in Robin's blog so as fast as 1 2 3, I had steaming buttery muffins for my fragrant stew. The best part is that you too can now bake them for yourself (I mean right away!).
Compared to Robin's recipe I added a few extra kicks to my muffins. I remembered having seen among my Stumbles a recipe featuring roasted sweet-corn kernels so they had to go in the muffins, and what about some real kick? As in Green Thai chili? You can bet on it! A little cheese too? Why not...

Roasted corn muffins with green chili and Parmesan crust

Ingredients (make 6 muffins):

• 120g milk, room temperature or lukewarm
• 50g butter, melted
• 1tbsp canola oil
• 1 egg, medium

• 3 tbsp sweet-corn kernels
• 1 medium garlic clove, unpeeled
• 1 Thai green chili, minced

• 80g cornmeal
• 50g all-purpose flour
• 25g sugar
• 3/4tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

• Parmesan

Method:
Heat up a skillet on a medium-low fire, add the sweet-corn and the garlic clove to it and roast them until they will start to caramelize.
In the meantime, combine in two separate bowls the dry and wet ingredients. Mix the dry ingredients with a fork or a whisk to ensure a uniform dispersion of the baking powder.
Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.


When the corn and garlic will be roasted, mash the garlic through a garlic press and add it with the corn to the dry ingredients followed by the minced green chili; mix thoroughly.
Mix the wet with the dry ingredients until nicely combined and spoon the batter into a paper-lined muffin pan. Sprinkle the top of each muffin with some grated Parmesan and bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.