Mini Corn Dog Muffins *Edited*

I'm always ready for warm weather, so the FIRST day it gets anywhere near 70 degrees, I'm ready to dig out the flip-flops and capris, plant some flowers, fire up the grill, and start making some "summer food"! Pennsylvania weather is CRAZY. Friday it was in the 70s-80s....Sunday night, it snowed! To cheer myself up after seeing those pretty but pesky little snowflakes, I decided I wanted corn dogs. Yes, I know they're just soooo healthy with their sodium packed, processed, mystery meat links dipped in a thick, sugary batter then deep-fried in fatty oil to a dark golden brown....but it's a weakness. And they make me think of carnivals and amusement parks and fairs and everything wonderful about SUMMER! Since I didn't have a stash in my freezer, I thought I'd make a mad dash to Wal-Mart to get some, but then I remembered something I had seen on-line somewhere before....corn dog muffins! I just so happened to have some corn bread mix lying around and a package of hot dogs in the freezer, so this is what I did:

Mini Corn Dog Muffins

Ingredients

store-bought cornbread mix OR homemade cornbread batter**

hot dogs (your choice of what type! and the number needed depends on the size of your cornbread recipe: I used 12 with about 3-4 'chunks' left over)

Yep, that's it!

Directions

(1) Preheat oven according to cornbread directions.

(2) Mix the batter and scoop into your mini-muffin tin(s). Fill them about 3/4 of the way. (I didn't grease my tins or use any muffin cups and had no issues with sticking!)

(3) Cut the puckered tips off both ends of the hot dogs, then cut in approximately 1 inch pieces. (I got five pieces from each hot dog....and Alexa enjoyed eating the leftover ends!)

(4) Press the hot dog chunks (vertically!) into the middles of your batter-filled muffin cups.

(5) Bake according to cornbread directions.

**I used Krusteaz Natural Honey Cornbread mix, but I don't see why you couldn't use just about any cornbread mix or homemade batter! This kind is pretty "gritty", but has a delicious sweet flavor. The box says it makes 24 mini-muffins, but I'm pretty sure we made closer to 40.

 (2)

 (3)

 (4) Alexa had to help!

 (5)

 Finished Product

So, were they as good as a real corn dog?

No.....

These were SO much better! Not only are they healthiER, but they had more flavor! And you don't have to worry about biting the stick! haha This is a great way to get your kids involved with helping in the kitchen. It's almost impossible to mess these up and so what if they're not exactly in the middle?! What kid doesn't love hot dogs?! HUGE hit with my family and they disappeared FAST. My husband ate twelve in one sitting!

Other variations:

**A. Make "normal" size muffins. If you want to go this route, your best bet would be to dice up the hot dogs and mix them into your batter. You're more likely to have a better hot-dog-to-cornbread ratio that way, because one hot dog chunk wouldn't be enough and two chunks would probably be too much.

**B. Breakfast! Have you ever seen the breakfast version of corn dogs? It's sausage links dipped in pancake batter! Maybe I'll try this for our Sunday school class one of these weeks....  :-)

>>>>>>>>>>EDIT<<<<<<<<<<

I tried out the Breakfast route because I'm in desperate need of quick, easy breakfasts for every day. They turned out okay, but I DEFINITELY need to find a sweeter pancake batter....or make them with mashed bananas in the batter....let me know if you come up with a tasty idea for this!

I used pre-cooked turkey sausage and plain, store brand pancake batter, following all the same directions as above. We dipped them in syrup for a little more "oomph", since these were seriously lacking in the sugar department.