Cranberry Orange Muffins

I ended up with half a bag of frozen whole cranberries and a couple of oranges after my brother-in-law made homemade cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving, so I decided to bake up a batch of Cranberry Orange Muffins. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

While most recipes call for milk, I'm not a milk drinker, so I hardly ever have milk in the house. What I do usually have is yogurt, so whenever I come across a recipe calling for milk, I use my yogurt instead. Normally, I would have plain or vanilla yogurt, but I happened to be playing around with coconut, so that's what I used. That hint of coconut flavor actually made a nice addition here, but it's not necessary.  If you decide to use milk, I would suggest reducing the amount by a few tablespoons.

INGREDIENTS :

2 c flour

1/3 c sugar

1/4 c light brown sugar

1 T baking powder

1/2 t salt

1 c chopped cranberries

1 egg

1/4 c canola or veg oil

3/4 c yogurt

1/2 t vanilla

1/3 c fresh-squeezed orange juice

zest of one orange

sanding sugar (optional for a bit of a crunchy topping)

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugars, baking powder, and salt.
2. Chop the cranberries and toss with the flour mixture to coat - like with blueberries, this helps to give the cranberries something to cling to so they don't sink to the bottom.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg and oil, then add the vanilla, orange juice, and zest.
4. Pour the wet mixture over the dry and fold together until just combined.
5. Spray or grease muffin cups - or line with cupcake liners - and fill each to about 2/3 full.
6. Sprinkle generous amount of sanding sugar over the tops.
7. Bake at 400 for approximately 20" until toothpick inserted into center tests clean.

When it comes to the cranberries, you could always throw them into the food processor and give them a quick whirl. Because mine were frozen, I found that they were very easy to cut, so I slowly ran a knife through the pile to break them up, then was able to chop more aggressively without them flying around the kitchen.

Perfect with a hot cup of Teavivre Oolong Tea.