Milk and Honey Corn Muffins

I had a piano lesson cancel today so I decided to find a muffin to make to go with our soup.  I really wanted a bread, but had no time for anything that would take up a lot of time.  I went to my King Arthur Flour whole grain baking book to see what I could find.  I ended up with this recipe because it didn't look like a sweet muffin, and seemed like it would go well with soup.   The recipe said it was supposed to make only 12 muffins and had 3/4 cup butter, so I did sub out 1/2 of the butter with applesauce.  My muffins were dryer for it, but we added some butter spread and honey and then didn't miss it.  More than anything, I really wish I wouldn't have gotten caught up in serving dinner and would have turned them out of the muffin tins a bit earlier.  I think that has a bit more to do with their being just a touch dry.

Ingredients

• 6 Tablespoons butter\
• 6 Tablespoons apple sauce (3/8 cup - 1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons)
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 Tablespoons honey
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups whole wheat pastry or white whole wheat flour (I used 1 cup I had ground on the bread setting, and I made another and 1 cup ground on pastry setting.)
• 2 cups whole yellow cornmeal
• 1 Tablespoon baking power
• 1 1/2 cups milk.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400.  Lightly grease a muffin tin (I needed to grease 1 tin and 3 more muffins.)
2. Cream together the butter, sugar and salt.  Beat in honey and eggs one at a time stopping to scrape the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl after each addition.
3. In a seperate bowl, whisk together whole wheat flour, cornmeal and baking powder.  Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture in thirds alternating with the milk.  Mix until batter is smooth.
4. Fill muffin tins to the top.  Bake 20-23 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then turn onto a rack to finish cooling.