Cranberry Orange Muffins

There's no place I love studying more at than a coffee shop.  The lighting, the soft music, the indistinct chatter, and the pretty way they display everything, from coffee beans, mugs, and especially the baked goods.  I rarely let myself have a baked good from a coffee shop because they're usually not that good for you, but I do admire how pretty their muffins are--way prettier than mine.  And they're always interesting flavors too.

So today, I decided to make a coffee shop-like muffin that we can make in our own homes.  Yummy cranberry orange muffins in parchment paper lining :)

Ingredients (12 muffins):
-1 cup dried cranberries
-1/4 cup orange juice
-2 cups flour
-2 tsp baking powder
-1/4 tsp salt
-1 stick butter, softened
-2/3 cup sugar
-1 tsp orange zest
-2 eggs
-1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 375F.

1.  In a small saucepan, bring cranberries and orange juice to simmer. 

Yum, these are so good.

Here's the OJ in a saucepan.

Simmering the craisins in the OJ will help them get all nice and plump.

2.  To make things a bit healthier, I used whole wheat flour.

Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl and set aside.

3.  Cream the softened butter, orange zest, and sugar together.  There's the butter.

For the zest, I usually just use a normal grater.  I will eventually have a zester as part of my kitchen utilities, but maybe in about a year.  If someone decides to buy that off our registry, anyway.

Here we go.

Perfect.  Though this is way over 1 tsp.  I'm over it.

You should smell this mixture, it's so fragrant and amazing.

4.  Add two eggs to butter/sugar mix.

5.  Add milk and flour mix to the butter/sugar mix, alternating back and forth between the milk and the flour mix.

Adding a little milk and switching to a rubber spatula.

Soon you'll get a mixture like this.  Normally, this isn't so tan-colored, but that's the whole wheat flour in action.

6.  Okay, so check out your cranberries.  Look how plump they got.

Drain the cranberries.  You can optionally save the orange juice that it was soaking in, add some powdered sugar to it, and make a glaze to pour over the muffins when they're done.  Fold in the cranberries to the batter.

Every time I see "fold" as an instruction in a recipe, I think of the cute little fairy in Sleeping Beauty who just kinda folds in two whole eggs between some batter and gives it a nice squish.

7.  This is the part I was most excited about.  You know how fancy muffins in coffee shops are baked in parchment paper squares?  I really wanted that to happen.  To do this, cut 12 squares (5" works well) of parchment paper.  You can find parchment paper in the same aisle as foil and plastic wrap.

Line the muffin cups with them.

And fill them with batter.  I used this giant spoon my mom has for serving.  Yeah, i'm wearing a pink shirt.  haha.

Overfilling is fine.

The liners won't really stay in the muffin tin until you put the batter in there, so don't be bummed if your parchment just pops out.
 
All done!

I also sprinkled a little sugar on top of the muffins for a little sweetness (i'm glad i did...putting in 3 times as much orange zest made it a bit bitter).

8.  Bake at 375F for 25 minutes.  Tada!

Deeeelicious, beautiful little muffins!

They are quite beautiful with their parchment paper sticking out, and the big globs of cranberries poking out from under billows of orange muffin. 

Here is what they look like out of the tin.

Make these for your next brunch, shower, or even study party.  Or, if you're bad like me, sneak it into a coffee shop to eat with your latte instead of buying one there.  Bring some along for your buddies, too!

And hey guys, guess what?  This weekend I'm off to Florida!  I'll take some pictures of fun food i'm trying out and post them here.  Enjoy!

For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.
The original recipe can be found here.