Cranberry Orange Mini Muffins

It's muffin time. Cranberry Orange (and lemon) muffin time, to be more exact. I had some extra cranberries left over from making my Cranberry Lime Champagne Fizz cocktails from our holiday party, and decided to put them to good use. I saw these yummy looking cranberry orange muffins on Pinterest and decided I had to make them for our work meeting this week. They turned out perfect-you've gotta make these!

The recipe I used was adapted from one at Lick the Bowl Good- so if you want to go back to the original (that has nuts, and no lemon)- check it out there!

I used:

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

2 1/2 Tbsp shortening

3/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice (about 2 large oranges)

1 Tbsp orange zest 

1 tsp lemon zest

1 1/2 cups chopped fresh cranberries

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 egg

1/4 cup raw sugar (or demera sugar)

 Step 1: Preheat your oven to 350 degrees
 Step 2: Use either shortening or non-stick spray to coat your muffin tins
 Step 3: Mix together your flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl and set aside.
 Step 4: Zest your oranges and lemon

 Step 5: Juice your oranges and add the juice to a bowl with the zest and the egg. Mix in to flour mixture until well combined.
Step 6: Chop your cranberries into small chunks and gently mix in to the batter.

Yes, it'll look like wayyy too many cranberries. it's not, I promise!

 Step 7:  Use a melon baller to dump even amounts of batter in your greased tins- about 2/3 full. Take your raw or demera sugar and sprinkle over the batter- in an even and full coating.

 Step 8: Bake for 12-15 minutes or until light golden brown.

 Step 9: Let cool completely in the tins, then pop them out and enjoy!

The sugar on top gives the muffins a nice little crunch and bit of sweetness to balance out the tart cranberries- totally delicious. They were a huge hit at the meeting as well as with Michael- they lasted about 2 hours! I highly recommend these muffins, they are deee-licious.

P.S. Demera sugar can be expensive to buy- I actually used packets of Sugar in the Raw! Whenever I get coffee to go I always grab a packet or two of the sugar then never end up mixing them in- so that part of the recipe was completely free!!