I Thought You'd Never Ask

You wanted to know what I had to go with that lovely Pumpkin Spice Latte didn't you? Oh wait you didn't ask- ha ha! but I'm gonna tell you anyway :-)

I made cranberry orange muffins- 00h yes! I saw the recipe for Cranberry Bread on Confections of A Foodie Bride last week and it looked so good, only I didn't want to be responsible for eating an entire loaf of bread by myself so I made them into mini and full size muffins. I mentioned that I made a birthday cake over the weekend, well I needed a 9x13 pan with straight sides and I didn't have one so I borrowed one from my neighbor. To show my thanks, I sent over half a dozen of these muffins.

The recipe calls for whole cranberries but since I was making them into minis I decided to cut them into halves and the larger ones into quarters. Accompanying the tart berries is orange zest and juice. They were moist, tart, slightly sweet, light in texture and low in fat. There's only 2 tablespoons of shortening in this recipe and the rest of the moisture is derived from an egg and almost a full cup of orange juice. These would be perfect for Thanksgiving morning or for snacking on throughout the day.

Cranberry Orange Muffins adapted from COFB

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2 Tbsp shortening
• 3/4 cup orange juice
• 1 Tbsp orange zest
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 cup cranberries, cut in half
• 3/4 cups pecans, chopped and toasted (optional- I left these out)
• 1/4 cup demerera sugar

Preheat oven to 350. With nonstick spray coat your muffin tins and set aside.

Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in the bowl of your stand mixer. Turn on medium and add shortening until combined. Add orange juice, orange zest, and egg. Mix until well-blended. Stir in cranberries and nuts. Portion out your batter into muffin cups filling each one no more than 2/3 full. Spread demerera sugar evenly over the top.

Bake mini muffins for 12 minutes and regular muffins for 17 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Remove the muffins from the pan and let cool completely on a wire rack.

Make 24 mini muffins and 9 regular muffins.

On a side note, here is my hairy girl waiting at the back door until I let her in. We usually leave the door cracked so when she's ready she can come in freely. But occasionally she just stands there and waits for us to give her permission to come in. Today she manged to get a foot in but she stayed there and looked at me until I told her it was okay to come in. What a ding dong!

Stay tuned for Apple Cranberry Sauce!