How To Make Cranberry Orange Muffins with Streusel
Isn’t it nice when you find a nice surprise item in the freezer that you sort of forgot about but piques your interest when you come across it? Not sure how those cranberries I found escaped the Thanksgiving feast and I am pretty sure there was cranberry sauce served. But, when I found them I considered it a bonanza. I like cranberries and figured why not bake them up into muffins. Plus, lately I seem to need more streusel in my diet so a How To Make Cranberry Orange Muffins with Streusel recipe seemed like a worthwhile endeavour.
How To Make Cranberry Orange Muffins with Streusel – The Cranberry and Orange
Let’s start by clarifying that this is a cranberry orange muffin not an orange cranberry muffin which means that I want cranberry impact with orange being a supporting flavor. I could do opposite, but that is a different post. To get good cranberry tartness throughout, the best thing to do is to rough chop the cranberries in the food processor. This will help spread the cranberry goodness. The orange flavor, which I prefer to be more aromatic, comes from orange zest. A small bit of orange juice is also used, just to bring home the flavor. You don’t want too much juice as it will make the muffin sour, which is not the goal.
How To Make Cranberry Orange Muffins with Streusel – Yep – a quick bread
From here on out, you are just making a quick bread. Wet and dry ingredients mixed together separately and then combined using nothing more than a fork to stir them together. In this case, baking soda and baking powder are used to make the muffins rise. Since we are using orange juice, we might as well harness the acid to activate the baking soda. Just keep in mind that care should be taken with baking powder and baking soda as it seems like more would be better for making really high muffins, but it is not the case. Often a quick bread will collapse because of too much leavener. the structure of the baked batter just can’t hold that many air pockets so it sinks. Not that it matters. I have had plenty of muffins with no top that tasted delicious.
How To Make Cranberry Orange Muffins with Streusel – The Streusel
Did I mention that I am trying to get more streusel in my diet? It’s a great topping for a muffin. The extra sweetness and brown sugar go great with the cranberries. Plus, the cinnamon helps the muffin sort of pay homage to a cranberry sauce with hints of orange and spice.
The ‘How To Make Cranberry Orange Muffins with Streusel’ video is below followed by the full recipe.
- ½ cup of flour
- ¼ cup of brown sugar
- ¼ cup of white sugar
- 1 tsp of cinnamon
- 6 tbsp of cold butter, cubed
- 2½ cups of flour
- 1 stick of cold, cubed butter
- ¼ tsp of salt
- 2 tsp of baking powder (about 1/2 oz)
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 cup of sugar
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tbsp orange zest
- 2 cups of fresh cranberries
- 2 eggs
- ½ cup milk
- ¼ cup orange juice
- 2 tsp vanilla
- Preheat the oven to 350F.
- In a medium bowl make the streusel topping. Mix the flour, brown sugar, white sugar, and cinnamon. Rub the cold butter into the streusel mixture until it looks sandy.
- In a large bowl or the bowl of your food processor, mix together the flour, salt and baking powder.
- Cut the cold butter into small cubes. Add the butter to the flour mixture and cut the butter into the flour using your fingers, a pastry cutter, a fork or food processor until the mixture has the texture of course sand.
- Move the butter/flour mixture to a medium bowl. Add the sugar, cinnamon and and zest to the flour mixture and stir it in with a fork.
- In another bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, juice, and vanilla.
- Using a food processor pr chef’s knife, coarsely chop the cranberries. Mix them into to the dry ingredients. (You can also fold them into the batter after the wet and dry ingredients are combined).
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients stirring with a fork until just combined.
- Line a muffin tin with paper cups. Fill the cups with batter using an ice cream scoop.
- Top each muffin with some of the streusel.
- Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until a knife or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Let cool 5 minutes in the pan. Remove the muffins to a cooling rack and cool completely.
I hope you enjoy!
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