This is the perfect way to eat Mexican when you’re on-the-go!

Don’t be fooled by the outside appearance of this muffin! It’s cornbread-like appearance can be deceiving, but the muffin base is definitely not the sweet-salty flavor of cornbread! Instead, is is straight-up true tamale saltiness!

Inside each salty cornmeal muffin you can use whatever tamale filling you like best (and I have some suggestions, too!)

Here’s the recipe:

Zesty Tamale Muffins

1 and 1/2 cups fresh ground flour

1 cup cornmeal

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon salt

Combine these ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the following:

1/3 cup canola oil

2 eggs

1 cup chicken or vegetable broth

Stir wet mix into the dry ingredients above. Then add:

1 egg white, beaten until stiff

Fold the beaten egg white into batter, then drop one scoop of batter into greased muffins tins, using an ice cream scoop. Top batter with a smaller scoop of taco meat, tamale filling, or my mixture* idea below:

You can also top this filling with chese, which I did not do in the photo, but which makes these much more kid-friendly.

Next, cover filling with a second ice cream scoop of the batter:

Bake at 400 degrees for twenty minutes, then allow to cool for ten minuted before removing from tins (when they’re really hot and soft, they can fall apart if you try to remove them from the tins too soon!).

These taste great when spread with sour cream!

*For my filling, I sauteed six ounces of chorizo sausage with a diced onion and minced garlic clove, then drained the oil and dropped it into the center of the tamale batter. This is spicy and not very kid-friendly, but I sure liked it!