Ready for a tangy taste of fall? Whip up these super-easy paleo orange cranberry muffins. They’re the perfect tease for your taste buds to get you in the mood for the upcoming holidays…
Gotta say I love cranberries. Their rich color and tart taste are incredible. Serve just about anything with cranberries in it – like a cake, sauce or drink – and I’ll be first in line to try it!
In my pre-paleo days, one of my favorite “recipes” was to add frozen cranberries to a box of instant cranberry/orange cake mix. Those shrunken little dehydrated nubs that came with the mix just didn’t do it for me – I wanted that crisp, juicy cranberry taste you can only get with the real thing. So, lame as it may sound, I doctored-up the off-the-shelf version and it always turned out pretty good.
In fact, that was my inspiration for this recipe…but instead of buying a package of cranberry-orange cake mix, this super-easy recipe lets you quickly whip together everything from scratch using all-natural ingredients. And of course, there’s no gluten or refined sugars in this paleo recipe!
I must admit, making a cranberry-orange paleo muffin mix wasn’t as easy as I first thought it would be. Balancing the orange and cranberry flavors was kind of tricky. But for my taste, the final version of this recipe turned out just right. You may want to add more or less of the orange zest depending on your personal taste. And if you like a little crunch with your muffins, toss some chopped pecans into the batter before baking.
These are wonderful hot out of the oven – light and fluffy with a taste that’s much more sassy than sweet. They make great breakfast muffins or an anytime snack. I like the mini-versions myself, but you can bake these cupcake-size or grab a bread pan for a full-size cranberry-orange cake if you like.
I hope you give these a try. They never fail to get me in a festive holiday mood – now I can’t wait for the turkey and cranberry sauce!
Enjoy!
Paleo Cranberry Orange Muffins Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups almond flour
- 1/4 cup coconut flour + 2 tbsp more
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 4 eggs, whisked
- 1/3 cup raw honey
- 6 tbsp coconut oil melted
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup frozen cranberries, unsweetened
- 1/2 cup juice from an orange we used naval oranges
- zest from 1-2 oranges
- Optional: 1/2 cup of pecans
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 350º F
- Zest your orange(s) with a grater
- Combine in a bowl all the dry ingredients above (the flours, baking soda and salt)
- In another bowl, combine all the wet ingredients excluding the cranberries together (eggs, honey, orange juice, coconut oil, vanilla, zest)
- Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients
- Now gently fold in the cranberries and (optional) add the pecans
- Pour into cupcake liners (we created 24 mini muffins and 4 regular-sized muffins with this recipe
- Cooking times: For mini muffins, approx. 18-20 mins; Regular-size muffins, about 25-30 mins
- Cooking times may vary – test by inserting a toothpick – if it comes out clean, the muffins are done
- Muffins can be stored in the refrigerator for several days, or freeze your extra muffins for thawing and serving later