Cranberry Muffins

I am on a constant search for the muffin recipe that is tasty and not heavy on the butter. I came across this one on one of the Russian food blogs and it won me over with the flavor and texture. These muffins smell like cheese-cake and stay very good for a couple of days. You can bake it as a cake in the bund cake pan. This recipe makes a good size cake and I have used it a few times for the birthday treat for the family. It comes out quite grand if you use a fun shaped bund cake pan and sprinkle it with powders sugar or birthday sprinkles. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour or 1 3/4 cups of flour and 1/4 cup of fine wheat bran
• 3/4 cup sugar (original recipe calls for 1 1/2 cup – so you may add more if you like things sweeter)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup of fat-free Greek yogurt (original recipe called for sour-cream – you may use that if you prefer)
• 2 eggs (you may use 1 regular egg and one flax egg: 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed and 3 tablespoons of water)
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 heaping cup of cranberries (I have made it with blueberries as well and it was very good)
• 1 teaspoon of grated orange zest (if using blueberries, substitute for lemon zest)

Beat eggs with sugar till pale and doubled in volume. Add yogurt, olive oil and vanilla. Mix well. Add salt and mix. Add flour and baking powder. Mix until just combined, leave a bit of unmixed flour as we will mix more with berries.

Chop cranberries. mix with the orange zest and add to batter. Mix the batter with the spoon to distribute berries. Do not overmix. Divide between the muffin cups. Sprinkle with sugar. I ended up with 6 jumbo muffins. Sprinkle with sugar.

Bake at 360 F for about 25 minutes or till the top is golden and the test pick comes out dry.