Cranberry Orange Muffins
Muffins flavoured with orange zest and juice and studded with fresh cranberries, finished with a sugar crust.
Photograph credit: Pumpkin Cranberry Orange Walnut Muffins by Thriving Vegetarian · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Before You Start
Halve the cranberries.
Rub the zest into the sugar.
Stop mixing while lumpy.
If your oven runs hot, check at 20 minutes in total.
Making Cranberry Orange Muffins
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Heat the oven to 200°C / 390°F and line a 12-hole muffin tin. Rub the orange zest into the caster sugar with your fingertips.
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Whisk in the flour, baking powder and salt.
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Whisk the eggs, milk, oil and orange juice and pour into the dry mix. Stir with a few strokes, then fold in the cranberries.
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Fill the cases to the top and sprinkle with the coarse sugar.
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Bake for 5 minutes, lower the oven to 180°C / 355°F and bake for 17 minutes more until golden.
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What's Going On Here
Cranberries, orange, flour, sugar and an egg: five things and about forty minutes. Fresh cranberries are sharp and a little bitter, and the orange tempers them.
Cut the cranberries in half so that they release their juice into the batter and do not sit as hard little lumps. Rub the orange zest into the sugar with your fingertips until it smells of oranges and looks damp, because that pushes the oils into the sugar and flavours the whole muffin. Zest the orange before you juice it. A squeezed orange is nearly impossible to zest.
Whisk the wet and dry mixtures separately and combine with a few strokes. Stop while the batter is lumpy.
Fill the cases fully, sprinkle with sugar and bake at 200°C / 390°F for 5 minutes, then 180°C / 355°F for 17 minutes. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes.
Leftovers, Reheating and Keeping
Keeps in an airtight tin for 3 days.
What to Serve Alongside
- Tea
- Coffee
- Orange juice
- Cream cheese
Cranberry Orange Muffins Nutrition
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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