Corn Muffins with Seasoned Lamb

It's Memorial Day weekend, and since it is the season for fair and picnic foods, I thought  I would experiment a bit with making something "vanillabean safe".  So why corn muffins with lamb? Because I've been seeing hot dogs and corn dogs and their baked modifiers everywhere on the food blogs I follow the past two weeks, and now, I am craving that guilty childhood pleasure a corn dog.  Since making my own hot dogs even before I start in on the corn dogs and then using up all my cooking oil to try my hand at deep frying them seems too much for a leisurely Saturday morning, baked stuffed corn muffins seemed a bit more my speed.  Even these got a bit more time intensive than I intended.

I started out with these three recipes:
Corn Dog Muffins from Alder's Grove  (the original inspiration I think)
Mini Corn Dog Muffins from the Pioneer Woman Cooks
Yellow Corn Muffins from Food.com

And then spun them together with a few substitutions.


Step One: "Hot Dogs"

The hot dog bits became little lamb meatballs seasoned with salt and sage, pan seared to get a nice browned outside, then baked in the oven.










Step Two: Zucchini Milk  ( substitute for the buttermilk in the Yellow Corn Muffins recipe)

This recipe came from the  Wow This is Allergy Free Cookbook.  The actual recipe ratio is

4 cup peeled, chopped zucchini
2/3 c water

Liquefy in the blender.
Heat in a saucepan just until a boil.

Since I didn't have that much zucchini, and my blender did not get the zucchini quite as liquid like as I had imagined... I added a bit more water.

Step Three: Corn Muffins

Substitutions were 1 2/3 c zucchini milk for the 1 cup butermilk; 2 T butter in place of the shortening; canola oil/water  in place of eggs. Mix up the batter. Fill the  muffin tins.

Step Four: Stuff the Corn Muffins with Little Sausages


Bake at 400 for 25 minutes.










While I am sure that any of the three recipes listed above is probably quite a bit tastier than these, they turned out pretty tasty anyway.  Only caveat, if I was serving these to friends, I would substitute pork or beef for the sausage center the lamb comes out pretty strong tasting in this , especially if it is not a flavor you are used to.  Now, if I only had ketchup...