What do you do with leftover cranberries after Christmas? Make Cranberry Muffins! These muffins are jumbo in size and super moist filled with fresh cranberries. Chock full of good sweetness, orange zest and juice, full fat milk and sour cream, eggs, and the usual dry ingredients… except a full tablespoon of baking powder for large lift. Cranberries are sprinkled with sparkling sugar and almond slices then drizzled with an orange glaze.
Cranberries are tart and pop full of flavor, a great berry for winter baking. I like to freeze extra bags of cranberries for year round baking or fillings. They will last in the freezer for at least 6-8 months if you wrap well in freezer bags. If you don’t want to use fresh cranberries use dried cranberries as a substitute in this muffin recipe.
Tip: Consider soaking the dried cranberries in warm water to soften and plump a bit before adding the raw batter. Its not necessary but you will have your cranberries evenly distributed in the batter of muffin instead of sinking to the bottom of the pan. You can also coat fresh cranberries with sugar and add to the muffin batter for sweeter cranberries.
What Makes a Great Muffin?
The ingredients and how you mix the batter that is the answer. Measuring flour exactly with the spoon in cup and knife level method instead of scooping big heaping cupfuls will keep your muffins from being dry and hard. Note: ALLOWING THE BATTER TO REST IN THE REFRIGERATOR OVERNIGHT or up to 36 hours. This really makes the muffins tender.This allows the flour to hydrate absorb the liquid. So this muffin can be a Make-Ahead Recipe.
Benefit: Refrigerated overnight muffin batter will make baked early morning muffins glorious and a time saver.
Do you use oil or butter? Sometimes I will use both, if the recipe calls for 1/2 of vegetable oil, use 1/4 cup melted butter and 1/4 cup vegetable oil instead. Butter offers a rounded flavor as a benefit of diary fat. I use real butter and not margarine as margarine is mostly water and oil. Land a Lakes or Tillman butter is full fat diary butter that always makes baked good perfect. Avoid seed oils as they can take on the seed flavor. You can use coconut oil, avocado oil, or pure vegetable oil.
Eggs, brown or white? It really doesn’t matter but make sure they are at room temperature. In a hurry to use eggs? Place eggs in small bowl of warm water for one to two minutes they will soon become room temperature.
Tip: Cold eggs will lower the temperature of your muffin batter and affect the height -rise of your muffins, it also will re-chill the melted butter you added. Best to use room temperature eggs. Re-chilling butter for pie crust is good, not so much for muffin making.
How to Mix the Muffin Batter-It Makes a Difference
If you want tender and moist muffins mixing the batter is critical. Mixing by hand is a good way to incorporate the ingredients without over mixing the batter. Over mixing batter causes dough to be rubbery and tough as well as flattening the muffins rise.
So… mix dry ingredients together, sifting is a good way to combine, make a well or center opening in the bowl of the dry ingredients then add all the wet-liquid ingredients. Wet ingredients include eggs, melted butter, vegetable oil, milk, sour cream, and extracts. Use a wooden spoon or a dough whisk for mixing dry ingredients with the wet ingredients.
If you want to use a mixer use the paddle attachment and cream butter and sugar on medium speed then reduce speed to low to add dry ingredients. So the butter would not be melted in this recipe it would have to be solid at room temperature to cream with sugar. Then mix the eggs and vegetable oil together to add to the creamed eggs and sugar.
How to Make Jumbo Muffins with a Domed Crown
Line a 2-6 cup jumbo muffin tins with jumbo cupcake liners. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper then place the jumbo tins over the parchment. This will help prevent over browning on the bottom of the muffins.
Use a 2-1/2″ large ice cream scoop or disher to fill muffin liners. You will need to do one and half scoops filling 3/4 full. Also in this recipe I increased the baking powder to 1 tablespoon instead of 2 teaspoons. To make standard muffins, use a smaller 1-1/2 ” ice cream scoop and fill 3/4 full. Sprinkle tops with sparkling sugar and sliced almonds.
Bake the muffins on the middle rack of preheated 400 degree oven. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees to bake the muffins. I also use convection bake for baking, it helps brown baked goods evenly. Bake the jumbo muffins 18-20 minutes or standard muffins 15 minutes.
When cool to touch, glaze with confectioner’s sugar, orange juice or orange extract with little bit of milk to make a medium consistency drizzle. Note: if you are planning to freeze a few muffins for later do not glaze. Glaze after bringing to room temperature and right before serving.
Serving and Storing Muffins
If you don’t want to eat all the muffins with in a couple of days, you can easily freeze them after they are baked. Allow muffins to cool, then place in zip lock freezer bag and freeze up to 2 months. It is best not to glaze before freezing but glaze right before serving. Bring to room temperature and slightly warm in oven or microwave. Mix up the glaze and indulge in goodness.
Store baked and glazed muffins in covered containers at room temperature for one day then refrigerate for best results.
Fresh Cranberry Muffins
Fresh cranberry muffins feature a tender crumb with a slightly tart and orange accented flavor. Sparkling sugar and sliced almonds garnish the jumbo muffin before baking then drizzled with orange glaze before serving.
MAKE A HEAD RECIPE: For super moist muffins, after mixing, cover batter and refrigerate overnight or up to 36 hours, the proceed to bake as needed. Delicious!
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 15-20 minutes
- Total Time: 35 minutes
- Yield: 8 jumbo muffins or 12 standard 1x
- Category: Bread-Muffins
- Method: Mixing
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
Dry Ingredient:
2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon sea salt
Wet Ingredients
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons sour cream
3/4 cup whole milk
2 eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon orange extract & 2 teaspoons orange juice or zest
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries, cut large ones in half
Garnish
3 tablespoons sparkling sugar
1/3 cup sliced almonds
Glaze
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 –3 teaspoons orange juice or 1 teaspoon orange extract
Instructions
1. Line 2 jumbo cupcake pans or 1-12 cup standard cupcake pan with cupcake liners.Use jumbo liners for jumbo pan. Arrange oven rack in center of oven. Preheat oven to 400, then reduce to 375 when ready to bake muffins. Line baking sheet with one sheet of parchment paper, position cupcake pans over parchment.
2.In large mixing bowl, add all dry ingredients, mix with dough whisk or whisk to combine.
3. Make a well or opening in the center of the flour mixture. Set aside.
4. Combine butter, oil, eggs, extracts, juice, sour cream, whisk with a fork to blend together.
5.Pour liquid or wet ingredients into the well of the flour mixture. Add cranberries, use dough whisk to blend flour mixture into the wet ingredients. Dough will be lumpy. Only mix until flour disappears.
6. With large ice cream scoop, scoop batter into the cupcake liners. Sprinkle with sparkling sugar and almond slices. Place in preheated oven and bake 18-20 minutes for jumbo muffins- 15 minutes for standard.
7. Remove from oven, cool to touch. Mix glaze in small bowl, drizzle over muffins. Serve slightly warm if desired.
Notes
1. Store muffins in covered container or before glazing, freeze muffins in freezer bags and pull out a muffin or two when needed.
2. You can use dried cranberries for fresh or frozen cranberries. Or substitute any dried fruit for optional flavor choices.
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