Cranberry and white chocolate muffins

This week has felt like a very long week so I decided yesterday that we were in need of some sugar at work today to help sustain us all through the last day of the week. I decided on this recipe as I had some leftover cranberries that had been loitering in the fridge since before the New Year. Cranberries and white chocolate are a perfect combination as the sweetness of the chocolate balances the sourness of the cranberries. I’ve made other white chocolate and cranberry recipes before including these very popular white chocolate and cranberry cookies and the bundt I made last week. These were very popular with both mine and Mr Birdie’s work colleagues. I have to say I wasn’t overly fussed by them but everyone else loved them (with one of my work friends declaring that they would marry me because of them!)

This is a Donal Skehan recipe that you can find on his website here. The recipe states that it will make 8-12 muffins. I made 16 small muffins and that wasn’t even using the full amount of ingredients as I only had 170g of cranberries. I decided it was a good opportunity to use the tulip baking cases I had bought from Dunelm Mill ages ago – the only problem being they don’t photography very well so apologies for the not very good photos!

Ingredients:

100g of butter (melted)
200ml of buttermilk
Zest of 1 orange
2 large free range eggs
150g caster sugar
250g self raising flour
250g fresh cranberries
200g white chocolate (roughly chopped)

Method:
1) Preheat the oven to 175C. Line a muffin tray with paper cases.
2) Melt the butter and allow to cool slightly.

3) In a bowl, whisk together the butter, buttermilk, orange zest and set aside.

3) In a free-standing mixer, beat the eggs with the sugar until light and fluffy (you can of course use a handheld electric whisk).

4) Add in the butter mixture and whisk until combined.

5) Chop the white chocolate. Gently fold in the flour until just combined. Stir through the cranberries and white chocolate until combined. (Be sure not to over mix the batter).

6) Spoon the mixture into the paper cases and place in the oven to cook for 15-20 minutes until brown on top (I found that mine needed at least another 5 minutes before they started turning brown).