The Sweet Side of Corn: Sweet Corn Cupcakes with Brown Butter Frosting
I love corn. When it’s in season, I sneak fresh sweet corn into every meal that I can. Before it goes out of season, I cut a bunch off of the cob to keep in the freezer, and when that runs out, I content my urges with store-bought frozen or canned. I eat the fresh stuff straight off the cob or use the stripped kernels of all varieties in quesadillas, salsas, salads, soups, stuffings, casseroles and pastas. I even enjoy corn in desserts, but it wasn’t always that way.
My first encounter with corn in a sweet context came perhaps 20 years ago, in the form of pancakes—delicate, fresh kernels had been folded into the batter before it was dolloped into a skillet of hot bacon fat. I was appalled: not at the bacon grease (even then I inherently understood that just about everything could be elevated by association with bacon), but at the corn.
