Cleo Coyle's Corn Muffin Tops a la Julia Child

☕ From Cleo Coyle (August 7, 2009): I find it difficult to fathom that cooking in 1949 was far from glamorous. Sixty years ago, celebrity chefs were not whipping up 30-minute meals on TV. Men and women weren’t chucking their Wall Street careers to enroll in culinary school and legions of journalists weren't writing about the latest Chef Prodigy to descend from Mount Gastronome. Back then, working in a kitchen was considered a lowly, non-intellectual profession. It wasn't even an acceptable middle-class hobby. It was something the hired help did.

Cleo Coyle created two
bestselling mystery 
mystery series, which she
writes in collaboration
with her husband. To

learn more, click here. 

Well, Julia Child didn’t care. In 1949, at the age of 37, this brave lady walked in to Le Cordon Bleu “weak in the knees and snozzling from a cold,” according to her memoir, My Life in France.

“By now I knew that French food was it for me," Julia wrote after living in France for a year with her husband, Paul.  "I couldn’t get over how absolutely delicious it was. Yet my friends, both French and American, considered me some kind of a nut…They did not understand how I could possibly enjoy doing all the shopping and cooking and serving by myself. Well I did! And Paul encouraged me to ignore them and pursue my passion.”

All I can say is: Thank heaven 

for the "nuts" of this world!

Julia struggled through her courses at the male-dominated French cooking school, but she soon flourished and began teaching others what she’d learned via cooking classes, cookbooks (her Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume I is considered a seminal work in the culinary field), and a television show, The French Chef, which so many newbie cooks grew up watching.

Confession: I wasn’t one of them. For one thing, I was too young and for another my mother and aunt, who were born in Italy, had already established a culinary tradition in our house of braciola, zucchini frittatas, homemade biscotti, wedding soup, and eggplant con everything (along with my Pop who made his own wine and grappa from the grapevine in our suburban backyard). Beyond them, my wider foodie education really didn’t begin until the 1980's with Jeff Smith’s PBS show, The Frugal Gourmet. Until I purchased Julia Child’s The Way to Cook in the early 1990’s, my awareness of Child was (in all honesty) limited to Dan Aykroyd in drag. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're in for a comedic treat...

👇 👇 👇

To go back down SNL memory late, click the arrow
in the window above. If you do not see a window above,
then click here to watch Saturday Night Live comic legend
Dan Aykroyd playing Julia Child on YouTube. 

So now there’s a movie (opening today) celebrating the late Julia Child’s life: Julie & Julia, directed by the amazing Nora Ephron. To see the trailer, click on the arrow in the window below...

If you do not see a window above, 
click here to watch the Julie & Julia trailer on YouTube.

Cleo's battered
(but well-loved) copy
of Nora Ephron's
culinjary-themed
roman a clef. 

Author, director, screenwriter, Ms. Ephron is truly one of my heroes. Her roman a clef, Heartburn, is a seminal work for me. That's my battered (but well-loved) copy of her book in the picture.

Well, I learned that Julia Child is one of Nora Ephron's heroes; and as I learned more about Child's life, I couldn’t help but admire the woman and be inspired by her, too.

With Ms. Ephron's film opening as a catalyst, I began searching through Julia Child’s massive The Way to Cook for a recipe to discuss: A feather-light soufflé, perhaps? Butterflied leg of lamb? How about duck pate baked in its own skin? Then I turned a page and saw…Buttermilk Corn Sticks. What?! I thought. Corn sticks? In The Way to Cook?! (I’d never noticed this before…)

“Definitely dressier than cornbread baked in the traditional square pan,” Julia wrote, “for which I usually use the recipe on the Quaker cornmeal box, corn sticks are so shapely you can well serve them not only at breakfast but at lunch, at dinner, or at high tea.”

Yes, you read that right. Tucked into this 528-page culinary master work, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Julia Child admits to using a recipe on the Quaker cornmeal box! How can you not love this woman?!! But that was Julia, I have to say: After reading her memoir and viewing some of her old shows, I now understand that she was never about haute cuisine for haute sake. What drove Julia Child was a simple, down-to-earth desire to share her hard-earned knowledge and sincere passion for good food.

Photo Credit: Lynn Gilbert, CC BY-SA 4.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via
Wikimedia Commons

Click here to watch Julia teach you 
how to cook. (She’s such fun, too!)

Back to the Corn Bread

Julia is right, of course. The basic recipe on the Quaker cornmeal box is a good one. Still, Julia knew that small changes to a standard recipe could yield even tastier results. She chose to replace the “skim milk” with buttermilk, reduce the sugar to 2 tablespoons, and increase the cornmeal in the cornmeal to flour ratio.

While Julia's is a perfectly fine version, I decided to learn from her example and make my own changes…

(1) Flour Ratio: First of all, the increase of corn meal in the ratio of corn meal to flour troubled me. I personally like the taste and grainy texture of corn meal, but I’m in the minority. My own readers have told me that they prefer a more cakelike corn bread product--so I flipped the ratio, weighting the flour for a smoother textured muffin.

(2) Sugar: Julia stated outright that she simply did not care for sweet cornbread. But I do. So does my husband. When it comes to a breakfast bread or afternoon break with coffee, nothing comforts and satisfies like a sweet corn muffin (so my recipe is sweeter than Julia's).

(3) Liquid: Julia’s choice of replacing the milk with buttermilk was inspired but most people don’t have buttermilk on hand, and I knew milk alone would not provide that slight little “tang” on the tongue that gives the corn bread yet another layer of flavor.

My answer—sour cream. 1 cup of buttermilk in Julia’s recipe became ½ cup milk and ½ cup sour cream in mine.

And finally I had an issue with the stick part of the corn stick molds. You see, no matter how much I buttered or oiled or sprayed the cast iron molds; no matter how much I pre-heated them and re-greased them, some of my corn sticks would stick. And (honestly) how many people even have cast iron corn stick molds in their cupboards?

What to do? Well, Julia herself gave me the solution (providing the "a la Julia Child" part of this recipe). If you don’t want to use corn stick molds, she advises you to:

“…form 2-inch rounds on the
baking sheets with a spoon.”

Muffin Tops!

Okay, so Julia didn’t call them "muffin tops," but that’s what they are in my adaptation of her recipe. As you’ll see in my photos, a 2-inch round with my recipe will spread and rise (with the help of a dash more baking powder) into the exact dimensions of a really good muffin top. You don’t need a muffin top pan, either, just a greased baking sheet, a hot oven, and you’re good to go!

FOR THE RECIPE...

Click here or on the picture
above to get my version
of Corn Muffin Tops.

(The recipe will appear in PDF format,
which you can save or print.)

For the recipe, click here or on
the image above to download
Cleo's Free Recipe PDF.

In cclosing, I’d like to leave you with Julia’s own parting words at the end of her memoir, in which she recalls the first meal she enjoyed in France—a dinner that changed her life:

“In all the years since that succulent meal, I have yet to lose the feelings of wonder and excitement that it inspired in me. I can still almost taste it. And thinking back on it now reminds me that the pleasures of the table, and of life, are infinite…”

~ Julia Child

At the end of my own recipes, I always say: “Eat with Joy!” But today, in tribute to one great lady, it seems only right to add:

Toujours Bon Appetit!

~ Cleo Coyle

New York Times bestselling author

of The Coffeehouse Mysteries and

Haunted Bookshop Mysteries

This is me -- Cleo (Alice) 

with my husband Marc.

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