Cranberry Muffins

My place now smells like lovely cranberry orange almond muffins, thanks to the recipe I tried this afternoon. Since I can't track down the source, I'll write it out. I think they turned out to be really delicious! 

Cranberry Muffins

1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour(if you can't find this, like I couldn't, use 1/2 cup whole wheat flour and 1/2 regular flour)

1 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking power

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp butter, softened

2 Tbsp. canola oil

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 tsp. vanilla

3/4 cup orange juice

1 tsp. orange zest(I forgot to write this ingredient on my recipe card so I'm assuming it was orange zest and assuming this is a good amount. Just add whatever you want, there's no rules for zest!)

1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries, whole

3/4 cup sliced almonds, divided

1.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees for muffins, or 350 degrees for mini loaves or a loaf pan. Coat pan of choice or line muffin tin if doing muffins.

2.) Whisk together whole-wheat flour, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in bowl. Beat butter, oil. and sugar in a large mixing bowl with electric mixer until creamy and pale. Add egg, zest, and vanilla, and beat until smooth. Alternately fold in flour mixture and orange juice, making 3 additions of flour mixture and two additions of orange juice. Stir in cranberries and 1/2 cup almonds.

3.) Scoop batter into prepared pans. Smooth tops and sprinkle with remaining almonds. Bake muffins 18-22 minutes, large loaf 50-60 minutes, or mini loaves 35-45 minutes, or until golden brown and tests clean when you test it with a toothpick. Cool 5 minutes. Loosen edges, and turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 12 muffins, 1 loaf, 3 mini loaves. Per muffin: 173 calories, 5 g fat, 2 g fiber

Here we have the dry ingredients mixed together. Good luck tracking down whole wheat pastry flour. I went to three grocery stores and ended up googling substitutes, which I included in the ingredient list.

The wet ingredients ready to mix. I actually didn't have quite enough orange juice so I just used water to make up the difference. It's still plenty flavorful. I also didn't know I needed the zest until it was too late for the orange so I just threw in some dry lemon peel I had, and I think it worked just fine.

The finished batter looks really amazing! It's pretty thick but it made 12 perfect muffins.

Ready for the oven. Pre-almonds on top.

Just out of the oven. The almonds toast on the top so you don't need to toast them ahead of time.

And the finished product. Pre-butter, of course! These were really good. The almond and cranberry come through really strongly and you'd never know there was no almond extract in the recipe! The texture is really god. I was very happy with these! Especially with the butter!

Muffins are generally a really easy type of recipe to make. They don't take too many steps and don't dirty too many dishes. This time of year we can finally get fresh cranberries. This is a great way to use some!

The 12 Weeks of Christmas Baking-Week 1

Yes, it's October and I'm starting the Christmas baking project in order for it to be done by Christmas! I started off easy, and luckily it turned out well! The recipe says it's from tasteofhome.com but I could not find it there or anywhere online so I'll go ahead and write it out.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

2 cups self-rising flour*

1/8 tsp. salt

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup mashed sweet potatoes

4-5 Tbsp. milk

In a bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in shortening and sweet potatoes until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in enough milk, just until dough clings together. Knead lightly on a floured surface. Roll dough to a 1/2" thickness. Cut with a 2" biscuit cutter and place on lightly greased baking sheets. Bake at 450 degrees for 12 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes: 1 1/2 dozen

*As a substitute for each cup of self-rising flour, place 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder and 1/2 tsp. salt in a measuring cup. Add regular flour to measure 1 cup.

I used the tip to make my own self-rising flour. It's a lot cheaper than buying a bag of self-rising flour. definitely don't waste your money. In case you're wondering how to cook the sweet potato, you can bake/roast it if you want, but I peeled, cubed, and boiled it like with regular mashed potatoes. I think it worked out really well. It made more than I needed and I froze the leftovers in hopes that it'll thaw ok for another use another time.

Everything blends together very easily. I ended up using 4 Tbsp. of milk and that made a perfect dough.

This was a really nice dough with a really pretty orange color!

I couldn't find my rolling pin easily so I just patted out the dough with my hands and it worked just fine. 

This made 3 more than the 1.5 dozen, so this dough goes a long way!

Here's the finished product, fresh out of the oven.

And the texture of the inside. This had a really great texture.

The flavor is pretty mild, but let's be honest, biscuits are merely vehicles for butter, honey, jam, or gravy, so that's where most of the flavor comes from. This was a good way to get a little more veg into your diet. If you're gonna make biscuits with a bunch of fat in them, you might as well have some veggies in them too, right?!

This would go well at the holiday table. If you're not a fan of sweet potato casserole or pie, give these a try, I think you'll enjoy them!