Mini corn dog muffins

A few months ago, I was shopping at our local liquidation center.  They had a box of snack foods....and when I say box, I mean a huge banana box full to the top.  It was wrapped in plastic so I couldn't check out the whole box, but on the top I could see some good stuff.  And, it was only $4 so I decided to go for it.

When I got home, I was happy to find many bags of cheeze-itz, mini oreos, granola bars, goldfish, etc.  But, when I got to the bottom, I realized that about 1/3 of the box was corn nuts.  I have NEVER had a corn nut in my life so Vlado and I split a bag.  It was awful....even Vlado turned his nose up at them.  So, the bags have sat in my pantry....I HATE to throw away food because I can usually figure out something to do with it.

Today, as I was browsing Pinterest, I saw someone had posted about doing mini corn dogs using corn muffin mix and cut up hot dogs.  I decided to attempt to use a bag of corn nuts.  I'm sure you're confused at this point.  I looked up a recipe for corn muffins.  I took a bag of the corn nuts and ground them down in my Magic Bullet blender.  This is what I used in place of the corn meal in the recipe.  My boys both love mini muffins so I used my mini muffin pan.  I cut up the hot dogs  (6 pieces per hot dog) and put one piece per muffin cup.  Here's the recipe I used.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup yellow cornmeal (ground corn nuts)
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 1/2 egg, beaten

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease 12 muffin cups.
2. Mix flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Add buttermilk, butter, and egg; mix well. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 12 to 15 minutes. Cool in the pans 10 to 15 minutes before removing from pan.  

This is what they looked like after they came out of the oven.  

The boys LOVED them!