Cranberry Oatmeal Flax Muffins

After Thanksgiving we bought some more cranberries because I wanted to make cranberry muffins. Some people actually use the left over cranberry sauce to make muffins. I did not do this because I made a Jalapeno Cranberry sauce and I read that if you put onions and jalapeno it doesn't work as well. Contrary to that, I still think it is possible. But Oatmeal and Jalapeno doesn't seem like it would marry well together.

Last night, I was combing the web for a good recipe. I did not find one that I liked, so I made my own. Along the way, I read a lot about the chemistry of food and interaction that occur during baking. Some questions I had in mind were about the use of baking powder, baking soda, and butter vs. oil. I will go into that later, perhaps.

The blog inspiration that I used to make my recipe can be found here and here.

You can also interchange the cranberry for something else like apples or blueberries. I like Pecans so I threw that in as well. I used oil for this recipe instead of butter to cut down on the saturated fat and cholesterol. If you like Chia Seeds you can also put some of those in there, maybe about a tbsp or so.

Cranberry Oatmeal Flax Muffins Recipe

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup all-purpose flour

1 cup regular oatmeal

½ cup brown sugar

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp flax seeds

1 cup chopped fresh cranberries

½ cup chopped pecans

½ cup vegetable oil

1 cup yogurt

1 egg

Let's make muffins!

1. Grease muffin pan or use liners. Set aside.

2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Place oven rack in the center position.

3. In a large bowl, combine flour, oats, brown sugar, flax seeds, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Whisk until well sifted and set aside. Make sure that you also break up the large brown sugar pieces.

Remove 1 tbsp and toss with fresh cranberries and pecans. Set aside. This prevents the cranberries from bleeding.

4. In another bowl, whisk oil, egg, and yogurt.

5. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add wet mixture.

Stir until moistened. Do not overmix, just until the wet and dry combine and is moistened.

Gently fold in chopped cranberries and pecans.

6. Scoop into a well-greased muffin tin about 2/3 of the way full. This should make 12 muffins.

7. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes. Let muffins cool for 5 minutes in their tins before removing to cool on a wire rack.

Here's how they turned out. Goes great with a latte and some fresh fruits.

And here you can see how moist it is.

I used the muffin method to make these muffins. Basically this is when you mix the wet and the dry ingredients separately and then add the wet to the dry. Stir with a spatula just until moistened and bake immediately.