Cranberry Orange Mini Muffins with Orange Sugar Topping
These adorable cranberry orange mini muffins each have one whole cranberry in the center and are topped with an orange infused pink sanding sugar. They're super cute and fun all year round, but are an especially good treat for Valentine's Day!
Ingredients
- 113 grams all purpose flour
- 1½ teaspoons baking powder
- 2 grams diamond crystal kosher salt (½ tsp, use ¼ teaspoon of any other salt brand)
- 70 grams sugar
- 57 grams buttermilk (room temperature)
- 1 large egg (room temperature)
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla
- 2 teaspoons orange zest (zest from ½ an orange)
- 57 grams unsalted butter (melted)
- 24 cranberries
lemon sugar topping
- 2 teaspoons orange zest (zest from ½ an orange)
- 48 grams pink sanding sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F. Line a mini muffin tin with muffin liners.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder. In a separate bowl, whisk together room temperature buttermilk, sugar, egg, vanilla, and orange zest. Slowly drizzle melted butter into the liquid ingredients, whisking well until thoroughly combined.
- Pour liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and gently fold together with a spatula or mix with a dough whisk just until combined. Do not over mix.
- Cover muffin batter and let rest 30-60 minutes.
- Rub pink sanding sugar and orange zest together in a bowl to use for muffin topping. The pink sugar can sometimes stain your fingers — wear gloves if you're concerned about this!
- Use a 2-teaspoon scoop to portion the muffin batter into the mini muffin tin. Press a single cranberry into the center of each muffin, then use a toothpick to push (or twirl) the batter over the cranberries to hide them. Top each muffin with the orange sugar.
- Bake for 13-15 minutes at 400°F. The muffins will not brown on top, but a toothpick inserted should come out clean (as long as you don't pierce a cranberry).
- Let cool in muffin tin 5-10 minutes, then remove to a rack to finish cooling completely.
RECIPE NOTES
- To quickly get eggs to room temperature, submerge them in hot tap water for 5-10 minutes.
- It's very important that the buttermilk and egg are at room temperature before you whisk in the melted butter. If the melted butter goes into cold buttermilk and cold egg, the butter will solidify and won't mix in smoothly.