Muffin Day!

Cranberry Orange Muffins

Sunday is usually muffin making day as I try and make them for cheap snacks for the coming week as well as an addition to Sunday breakfast.  I made these cranberry orange muffins for the first time yesterday.  First let me say that if you like tart then you will like these and I will definitely be making these again.

I am one of those cooks that likes to change recipes to fit what I have in the cupboards.  I hate having to run to the store for special ingredients.  I started with this allrecipes.com recipe and changed it to:

2 cups flour any kind ( I used all purpose white)
1/2 cup sugar (one cup of sugar would have been way too much)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking power
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
one large orange including rind (I sliced off the orange bits, put them in my Cuisinart minifood chopper, then cut up the orange and cut off most of the rind bits, whizzed all up and poured it in)
1/2 teaspoon each (or as much or as little as you prefer) cinnamin, cloves, allspice, ginger
1 cup frozen whole cranberries, thawed and cut in half
1/2 cup leftover cranberry sauce (frozen and thawed from Thanksgiving), could substitute pineapple
1/2 cup butter (or shortening, I prefer to bake with butter rather than oil or shortening)
2 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon extract of your choice (vanilla, almond, I used orange as just bought some in the USA)

I left out the nuts and topping, the muffin is great on its own without both.

I bought the fresh cranberries a few weeks ago and froze them in anticipation of trying a recipe like this, bought when they were on sale for $1.88 a bag and there are still at least enough for two more batches.

It looks like the apple crisp will have to wait until next weekend.  Cheers!