Easy Apple & Cranberry Muffins

After the glut of apples we’ve had in the garden this year – all from just one old tree that seemed to spring to life and never stop sprouting apples! a lot ended up in the freezer.

I’d simply peeled and sliced the apples, then added in a couple of spoons of sugar and 1/2″ of water and let them simmer until they were soft, turning them every 5-10 minutes.  They didn’t take long and they were then frozen into individual portions and chucked in the freezer.  Well, now it’s Xmas and we’ve not eaten them, so this is a great recipe to use up that apple – and a great excuse to pop out and buy some apples if you’ve not got any handy.

For this foodcheat recipe I’m using the American method of weighing/measuring, which relies on cups.  One cup is half a pint, so it’s easy to quickly weigh out your ingredients, rather than having to own, or use, some weighing scales.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of plain flour (known as all-purpose in the US)
• 1 cup of sugar – any sugar will do!
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 0.5 teaspoon of salt
• 1 medium egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup unsweetened stewed apples, or a tin of apples if you have that
• 1 cup of cranberries, either fresh or frozen, chopped up into tiny pieces
• 1 cup of pecan nuts, chopped

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C (350°F , Gas Mark 4).
2. Lightly grease your muffin tin.
3. Mix together the plain flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Separately, mix the egg, apples and oil.  Add the two mixtures together and blend together gently, mixing them just enough and without beating.
4. Gently fold the cranberries into the mix before scooping it into your  muffin cups, so they’re just over half full.
5. Bake for about 30 minutes, remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes before removing the muffins from their cups.

These muffins are super moist and tasty, but go easy as there’s a lot of sugar in them! You can substitute the sugar for sweetener though.

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