Spinach and Corn Muffins

With the holidays over its back to preparing school and work lunches every morning - my least favorite job! My boys (hubby and son) love a sweet or savory muffin packed in their lunchboxes, and I like to vary what I bake so they don't get bored and hit the cafeteria. This week I baked them some Spinach and Corn Muffins:

For the life of me I can not get them to eat wilted spinach with a poached egg or raw in a salad, but if I chop it up and put it in muffins they love it. There's lots of different flavors going on in these muffins so I guess it disguises the taste of the spinach.
I could eat spinach at every meal, its one of my favorite greens and these little muffins are perfect to eat as a snack or to have for lunch with a bowl of soup.

I'm pretty sure I found the original recipe in a magazine at the hairdressers a few years ago. Why is it we always find the good recipes in the doctors, dentists or hairdressers magazine stash? Thank goodness for the iPhone - no more silently ripping out pages or madly scribbling on the back of a receipt ;)
Along with the spinach there's the gorgeous flavors of cornmeal, oat flour and sage and sweetness from the manuka honey. Its a match made in heaven...muffin heaven!
Oat flour is easy to make yourself - just blitz some rolled oats in your blender until it resembles flour (its also cheaper than sourcing packaged oat flour at the supermarket). Manuka honey can be substituted for any raw honey and if you cant find cornmeal then polenta works just fine.

I like to be generous with the spinach, as you can see, roughly chopping it up before I add it to the muffin mix. Because I don't use sage very often, I used dried ground sage for this recipe. Its convenient and it lasts longer in the pantry. If you have fresh sage use it, just be sure to mash it up and triple the quantity as dried is far more potent than fresh.
Buttermilk activates the bi carb and gives these muffins a light airy texture but again make your own substitute - there's no need to go out and buy fancy ingredients for one recipe when you can DIY. Try this substitute recipe HERE.

They look pretty yummy don't they? And the best part is they're a healthier option for the lunchbox - just please don't tell my boys ;) I love how bright and colourful they are and it's a great way to disguise some of the super foods in a muffin the kids will love (and the big kids aka. husbands).
This recipe makes a batch of twelve muffins and you can freeze them and pop them in the lunchboxes to thaw before lunch. They're also great for picnics, so make a batch and share them on your next outdoor adventure.

Whether you bake them for the lunchbox or to have with a bowl of soup during the winter, this recipe is a great one to have in your files.
If you would like to try these Spinach and Corn Muffins you can download the recipe by clicking the link or right click on the photo below and save it to your computer.