Cranberry Orange Muffins with Rosemary

I love to bake muffins on the weekend and then eat them throughout the week for breakfast. These cranberry orange muffins have a hint of rosemary and are a perfect winter breakfast with just the right flavors and spicy to remind you of the holidays.

Is there any better smell than when you’ve got a batch of homemade muffins baking on a cold winter morning? I love the savory, sweet, and tart components of this muffin recipe and the absolute best part is the little surprise crunch you’ll get from the turbinado sugar topping.

Cranberry Orange Muffin Ingredients
How to Make Cranberry Orange Muffins
Get the Kids Involved!
Fresh or Frozen Cranberries?
What is Turbinado Sugar?
Cherry Vanilla Muffins

Cranberry Orange Muffin Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup fresh cranberries – chopped
3/4 cup whole milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
Zest from one small orange (about 2 teaspoons)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary – finely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
Additional cranberries and Turbinado sugar for topping

How to Make Cranberry Orange Muffins

Pre-heat your oven to 350-degrees. Line your muffin tin with muffin cups or spray empty tin with cooking spray.

Chop your cranberries or pop them in a small food chopper to make it super easy!

Start the muffins by getting your flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon all whisked together in a big bowl.

Add in your chopped cranberries and stir until they’re coated in flour.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together your milk, oil, vanilla, egg, rosemary, orange juice and zest.

Slowly pour the egg and milk mixture into your dry ingredients and hand-stir just until combined.

Spoon batter into the lined cups or greased muffin tin almost to the top.

Top with a few fresh cranberries and some turbinado sugar.

Bake at 250-degrees for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in a middle of a muffin comes out clean.

Shopping List

Here are a few things that I found helpful for this recipe!

Mini Food Processor: This makes chopping cranberries a breeze! You could also chop them roughly by hand, but I like how quickly the food processor does the job.

Muffin Tin: This recipe makes a dozen standard size muffins so a 12-count muffin tin is excellent to have on hand if you don’t already have one!

Muffin Liners: I try to always have these muffin tin liners on hand in my cupboard, but if you don’t want to buy any, you can just grease the muffin tin really well with some non-stick cooking spray.

Turbinado Sugar: Turbinado sugar is the best for topping muffins (and scones!) because of the crunchy texture it adds.

Get the Kids Involved!

I love making muffins with my daughter. All week I ask her if she wants to eat “one of the muffins Willa made” and her face lights up and she tells her dad that she’s eating a Willa muffin. She loves helping in the kitchen and here are some of the steps I let her help me with:

Pouring measured dry ingredients into bowls
Stirring the batter to combine everything
Adding the fresh cranberries to the batter
Scooping the batter into the muffin tins
Taste testing the final result!

Fresh or Frozen Cranberries?

You can use both! I prefer to use fresh, but if you have frozen just add them to the batter right out of the freezer! If you thaw them, they can become a little too watery and will make your batter too loose.

If you’ve got dried cranberries, you can add those instead. You could also simmer them in a saucepan for about 10 minutes and then drain and add them as well!

What is Turbinado Sugar?

Turbinado sugar is a partially refined sugar that gets its golden brown color from some of the original molasses during the refining process.

It’s also called raw sugar, but it isn’t exactly raw and has been processed to clean out any debris or impurities.

Cherry Vanilla Muffins

Not a fan of this flavor combination? Try my cherry vanilla muffin recipe for another great make-ahead breakfast idea!

Some other muffin flavor combinations I love are:

Pear and Cranberry: Just add some chopped pears, remove the rosemary
Apple and Cranberry: Add some chopped apples, remove the rosemary
Cherry and Almond: Use chopped cherries with chopped almonds and a drop of almond extract
Vanilla Orange Muffins: Keep the orange zest and a small amount of orange juice, use pure vanilla extract

I hope this cranberry orange muffin recipe makes it to your table this holiday. Let me know if you end up making these and tell me what you think!

Recipe adapted from Cooking Light.