Cranberry Sauce Almond Muffins by Barbara

Starting the new year by cleaning out the freezer and the fridge; hence, the turkey pot pie I made for New Year’s Day. See previous post. Another thing I had forgotten I had frozen was the cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving.  There was about a cup left.   (My recipe is here. It's made with orange juice and orange marmalade.)  

I thought muffins would be a good thing to make. So, I started looking through my cookbooks. I ran across this recipe King Arthur’s Baking Companion which addressed the leftover cranberry sauce issue!  It's for a coffee cake, not muffins.  

Required a tube pan which I don’t have, plus I didn’t want to bother with a mixer. So I adapted it to handmixing and making muffins my usual way (adding melted butter).  And I skipped making a powdered sugar glaze.  

I had a few issues. 1) I overfilled the tins. 2) They didn’t rise as they should have because I didn’t realize I had accidentally doubled up the muffin tins which acted as an insulator and affected the bake. Nonetheless, the flavors are terrific!

Love the almondy-ness of these muffins. 

Will definitely make them again ...after Thanksgiving.

----Barbara 

Cranberry Sauce Almond Muffins

Makes 16 muffins

1 cup cranberry sauce

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs, room temperature

1 stick (8T.) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1/2 c. slivered almonds, toasted

1 t. almond extract

2 cups flour

1 t. baking powder

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

1 cup whole buttermilk

baking spray for muffin tin

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Measure out the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt) in a separate bowl, and whisk together.  

Toast the nuts, and let them cool.

Melt the butter and let cool.  

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs until fluffy.   Add the sugar and whisk together until smooth and not grainy.  

Add the almond extract.

Add the melted butter, and combine until smooth.

Add the buttermilk and combine until smooth.

To the dry ingredients, add the toasted almonds and mix them up until all the nuts are covered.  This will help keep them from sinking to the bottom of the muffins.

Then, all at once add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until just combined.

Add the cranberry sauce and stir together gently until evenly distributed.

Spray the muffin tins, and fill 16 muffin cups.  Don't overfill them like I did. I only filled 12 and they were too full.  Probably 1/4 cup or half way up the muffin cup.  

Yikes!  

Bake for 18 - 22 minutes, checking to see if they are done at the 18 minute mark.  Mine took 22 but that might have been because I accidentally used two tins stacked together which acted as an insulator.  

Cool in the pan.  

They came out easily, overflow and all. 

I removed the edges so you could see what one might look like if I had portioned them correctly.

The almond flavor is what makes this recipe memorable.   

I froze the extras in bags of two to have with coffee in the mornings.   

B