Cran-Orange Apple Muffins

I was going through a breakfast rut and decided I wanted muffins.  I've made a lot of banana things lately and decided I wanted to do something different.  I had just bought granny smith apples at BJ's and I had small boxes of dried cranberries so I decided to make cran-apple muffins.  I couldn't find a recipe for that without sour cream or plain yogurt (neither of which I had).  So I then found this recipe for Cranberry Orange Muffins.

Ingredients

• 1 cup dried cranberries
• 1/4 cup fresh orange juice
• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened, plus more for preparing the muffin tin
• 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar, plus up to 1 tablespoon for topping the muffins, if desired
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup milk

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Put the cranberries and orange juice in a small saucepan, and bring just to a simmer over medium heat. Remove berries from the heat, and set aside to cool and plump. Drain off any excess liquid and set aside.
Lightly brush a 12-muffin tin with butter. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.
In a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or with an electric hand-held mixer in a large bowl, cream the butter, orange zest, and 2/3 cup sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Remove the bowl from the mixer.
Fold the flour in 3 parts into the butter mixture, alternating with the milk in 2 parts, until just combined. Fold in the cranberries. Do not over mix. Divide the batter evenly into the muffin tin and sprinkle the tops with sugar. Bake until golden brown, about 25 minutes. Cool muffins in the pan on a rack. Serve warm.

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I decided I wanted to make them with the apples still since that was my original thought.  So I used 1/2 c. dried cranberries instead of a whole cup and added a chopped up granny smith apple too.







 
These were good.  There wasn't a whole lot of orange flavor to them.  They were very moist.  I felt like they could have handled the whole cup of cranberries and more apple. 



Next time I may eliminate the orange all together and use apple juice to reconstitute the cranberries and use a whole cup of cranberries and 2 apples.  If I was going to do the orange flavor again I think I'd use the zest of two oranges and more orange juice to the heated mixture