Monday, August 30, 2010

Cranberry orange & walnut whole wheat muffins


I actually dreamt these muffins into existence. The other night, I had a dream about making these muffins in great detail, from the orange zest to the cranberries and walnuts. Funny thing is though - I have no idea what prompted my dream. I started looking for a recipe and was having a hard time finding one that had all the criteria I wanted - mainly the whole wheat flour component.

Finally, I hopped on Katie's blog, and of course the very first muffin recipe that comes up under her tag is for the exact muffin I've been searching for! Now she posted this back in January, so maybe its been hiding out in the recesses of my mind just waiting to surface in a dream so that I would make it! Either way, I'm glad I did, this is an extremely healthy and very tasty recipe.


I made a few variations/substitutions to Katie's recipe:
* Used walnuts instead of pecans
* Omitted the flax seed (I couldn't find it and didn't feel like searching too hard)
* Since cranberries aren't in season I used dried cranberries and plumped them up in water prior to mixing into the batter

Cranberry Orange Walnut Whole Wheat Muffins
Adapted from Good Things Catered

Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup oat flour - Just throw some oats into your food processor to make this yourself!
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
zest of 1 large orange
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup apple sauce
1/2 cup skim milk
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1 Tbsp honey
1 large egg white
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup fresh cranberries (or frozen, or dried plumped up in water)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line muffin tins
-In a large bowl, add sugars and applesauce and mix until very well combined.
-Mixing while incorporating, add milk, juice, honey, egg, and vanilla.
-Mix to combine well.
-Sift flours into large bowl.
-Add baking powder, cinnamon, salt and orange zest.
-Fold dry ingredients into wet.
-Fold dry ingredients in until half way combined, about 6 full strokes.
-Add cranberries and walnuts and fold in. (Batter should be just barely combined)
-Spoon batter into muffin tins
-Place into oven and bake until toothpick inserted into center of muffins comes out clean, about 20-25 minutes.

2 comments:

  1. Those look fantastic and what a lovely dream! =)

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  2. I dream in food too... isn't that wonderful and strange? I dreamt a recipe for a salsa topping for fish a few weeks ago. And it turned out really well! These muffins look great and I'm going to try them next week. Love the use of whole wheat flour, so we can all feel a little less guilty. :)

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