Cranberry Lemon Muffins

My local grocery store had a sale on bags of frozen fruit - so of course I'm going to stock up! They are perfect for my work muffins. Blueberry was gone so I had to stick with festive cranberry. I actually prefer frozen cranberries while baking, luckily. I googled around for a simple cranberry muffin recipe and came across this Cranberry Lemon Muffins recipe from a local grocery store, Fiesta Farms. Perfect for a cold afternoon. Here's my adaptation.

First mix the dry ingredients: 2 cups flour, 1/2 cup white sugar (down from 1 whole cup in the original recipe), 3 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt. Add the zest of one lemon. Then cut the lemon in half and juice it, so that you get 2 Tbsp of lemon juice. Stir this into 1 cup milk, and let it sit - the milk will get sour, and in fact quite clumpy, but this is a good thing - like using buttermilk it will help the raising and give it a lemony kick. Meanwhile, beat 2 eggs in a small bowl, then mix in 1/3 cup oil and the soured milk.

Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix until almost incorporated, then throw in 1 1/2 cups cranberries. Mix gently. Pour into muffin tins - it made a good 16 so have two ready. I topped mine with Swedish pearl sugar and cooked @400 for about 20 minutes - maybe a bit longer since the cranberries were frozen. The tops were exploding with cranberry goodness and they were faintly lemony, but not too strong. I may add more zest next time to up the citrus flavour. Perfect with coffee, tea, jam and clotted cream - if you're lucky enough to have some!