Marmalade Cranberry Walnut Muffins

The base for these muffins came from the Marmalade Mogul Muffins recipe that is in the book Tough Cookie by Diane Mott Davidson.  The protagonist in Davidson's books is a caterer who solves mysteries; the books all have recipes included.

The recipe in the book claims to make 28 muffins.  They must be some pretty big muffins because I halved the recipe and still got 20 muffins.  I also added some ingredients but that couldn't have increased the volume too much.

I've been using Greek yogurt in the place of milk and buttermilk lately and I made that same substitution here.  I read somewhere on the Internet that you can substitute yogurt for milk when baking but should add 1/2 baking soda for every cup of yogurt.  You should stir the yogurt to thin it and I sometimes add a bit of water or juice to make it even thinner depending on what I'm making.  In this recipe I used 3/4 C of yogurt and 1/4 C of tangerine juice to replace the buttermilk.


My adapted recipe:

1 Stick butter (1/4 lb)
3/4 C Sugar
2 eggs
3/4 C Greek yogurt (I used 2%)
1/4 C Tangerine Juice
1 3/4 C unbleached white flour
1/4 C whole wheat flour
1 1/2 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 T orange zest
1/2 C marmalade
1/3 to 1/2 C chopped walnuts (to your taste)
1/3 to 1/2 C 1/2 C dried cranberries (to your taste) 

I tossed the cranberries with a bit of flour and chopped them up
Mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.
Cream the butter and sugar and then add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.  I mixed the tangerine juice into the yogurt before pouring that into the butter, sugar, egg mixture.  Add the dry ingredients.  The batter will be thick.  Stir in the marmalade, zest, walnuts and cranberries. Fill your muffin cups 3/4 full. I did use silicon liners but you can also use paper liners. The original recipe calls from sprinkling additional sugar on the tops before baking but I didn't do that.

Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

I love the orange flavor in these muffins along with the cranberries and nuts.  I do think they were just a little bit dry and that might be from adding the wheat flour but they were still delicious.  I might put some applesauce in next time for some extra moisture.