These Cranberry Orange Muffins are bursting with so much fresh flavor. Using just a handful of pantry staple ingredients, you can have these muffins prepped in just 15 minutes. They’re perfect to make ahead for a busy week as an on-the-go breakfast or snack.
Calling all of the muffin lovers out there, this recipe is the perfect fall and winter bakery-style Cranberry Orange Muffin you can make easily at home. We love when fresh cranberries start showing up at the grocery store, and when they arrive this cranberry muffin recipe calls our name.
Through multiple recipe tests we perfected this healthy recipe using whole-wheat flour, Greek yogurt, and olive oil, but you’d never know it was so wholesome. It tastes just like a classic muffin.
The ingredient list is too simple, you probably have most of them already right in your kitchen. And these are ready to pop into the oven in 15 minutes, how easy is that?
We share all our expert tips on how to achieve the impressive domed top with a moist and flavorful interior. If you love a bakery-style treat that’s easy to make at home, also try our Blueberry Muffins and Olive Oil Carrot Muffins. And if you’ve got more fresh cranberries on hand, whip up my Cranberry Tart for the holidays!
These muffins are delicious and it’s awesome that they are healthy too! Thank you for the recipe!
-Karly
Why You’ll Love this Recipe
- 15 Minutes to Prep. Whipping up this batter is quick and easy. Use a food processor to make quick work of mincing up the cranberries. You could even use the food processor to blend together the wet ingredients and pulse in the dry. A few less bowls to dirty!
- Perfect Make Ahead Snack or Breakfast. These muffins store well for 2-3 days at room temperature. Just sweet enough, they’re a great afternoon pick-me-up.
- Easy to Customize with Substitutions (see below): play around with the added spices and fruit. Mix in crystalized ginger or swap some of the cranberries for grated apple. I also offer options on how to make these egg free or vegan below.
Ingredients
- Fresh cranberries: I don’t recommend swapping the fresh cranberries out for dried, they are completely different. Look for fresh cranberries in the produce section of your grocery store. They’re usually chilled near the celery.
- Whole-wheat flour: I like white whole-wheat flour here, but you can also use regular ww flour. If desired, you can swap in all-purpose.
- Cornstarch: this is key for creating a tender muffin, especially one made with whole-wheat flour!
- Baking powder and baking soda: the leaveners that give the muffin the correct amount of lift! This is one key to creating that gorgeous domed top we all love about bakery muffins.
- Spices: you’ll need kosher salt, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and vanilla extract for this recipe. Salt to balance the sweetness, warm spices and a dose of vanilla for depth.
- Greek yogurt: for the best muffins, I recommend using whole milk greek yogurt—not low fat. You can also use sour cream.
- Olive oil: use a quality, flavorful extra-virgin olive oil.
- Maple syrup: these muffins are naturally sweetened! Be sure to use pure maple syrup.
- Large eggs: use eggs labeled as “large.”
- Orange zest: you’ll need one orange for this recipe. The grated zest is added to the batter and on top. Use the zested orange to make my Apple Cider Margaritas!
- Turbinado sugar: sold as sugar in the raw. Sprinkled over the batter, this creates a sweet crunchy topping once baked.
How to Make Cranberry Orange Muffins
- Pulse cranberries in a food processor until finely chopped.
- Whisk together dry ingredients (whole-wheat flour, cornstarch, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, salt and cloves).
- Whisk together wet ingredients until smooth (yogurt, oil, maple syrup, eggs, orange zest, and vanilla extract).
- Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix until mostly combined.
- Fold in chopped cranberries.
- Divide batter between muffin cups.
- Combine turbinado sugar and orange zest; sprinkle evenly over each cup.
- Bake muffins 5 minutes at 425°F then, with muffins in the oven, reduce oven temperature to 350°F and bake, 16–18 minutes more. (This temperature trick will create that gorgeous dome.)
Pro Tips
- Get that beautiful bakery-style domed top. The trick is to jumpstart their baking at a high temperature in the oven (this activates the leavener). After a few minutes, drop the temp down to a medium heat (350ºF or 375ºF) to encourage even baking.
- Lower the oven temperature after the initial few minutes. After the top has puffed from a higher temperature, the oven temperature needs to lower back down so that the inside of the cupcake can cook evenly.
- Be sure to fill your muffin cups to the top! With a thick muffin batter they won’t overflow like cupcakes would. They will bake and rise perfectly.
- It’s best to use fresh, not frozen cranberries. You can definitely use frozen cranberries in a pinch. It’s best to use them still frozen, not thawed. Process the frozen cranberries in the food processor as directed, then add the chopped frozen berries right to the batter.
- Use a toothpick to check for doneness. If the toothpick comes out clean rather than moist with batter, the muffins are done.
Substitutions
It’s easy to customize these cranberry muffins to your liking with different ingredients. Give these options a try:
- Greek yogurt: I recommend whole-milk Greek yogurt, but you can use any fat content you prefer, just be sure to use Greek yogurt. Sour cream can also be substituted.
- Make these Egg Free: Substitute flax eggs for regular eggs. To make a flax egg, combine 1 tablespoon ground flax (flax meal) with 3 tablespoons water. Let mixture soak for 10 minutes before using.
- Make these Vegan: Replace eggs with flax eggs (see note above). Replace Greek yogurt with 1 cup thick vegan yogurt, or replace with 2/3 cup vegan buttermilk (⅔ cup non-dairy milk + 2 teaspoons white vinegar). Let buttermilk rest 5 minutes before using.
- Make these Gluten-Free: Swap the whole-wheat flour for a 1:1 gluten-free flour blend, such as Bob’s Red Mill.
Baking with Greek yogurt
Any kind of quick-bread recipe (banana bread, zucchini bread, carrot bread) benefits from a creamy dairy-based product. Why? For one, the acid in the dairy activates with the baking soda. And two, dairy helps to create a baked good that’s tender and airy.
Common dairy products used in quick breads and muffins include yogurt, Greek yogurt, sour cream and buttermilk. This healthy cranberry muffin recipe calls for Greek yogurt, which makes the muffins tender and moist, but also packs them with protein and calcium.
Storage and Freezing
You can store these healthy cranberry muffins in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days. We love to warm ours in the toaster oven or regular oven for a few minutes before serving. It’s a trick to make them feel like they just came out of the oven.
Freezing the muffins isn’t a problem either! Just wrap in plastic or in an airtight container again and freeze for up to 2 months. Thaw at room temperature for a few hours before serving.
FAQs
We recommend using fresh since dried can weigh down the batter and make them not as moist. If you are using dried cranberries, be sure to not over-bake the muffins.
Depends on the recipe. We use olive oil with these muffins to ensure that the whole wheat flour base remains extremely moist. Butter is great for flavor in other muffin batter recipes.
A thicker batter will lead to a denser muffin while a thinner batter will result in a light and airy texture.
More Muffin Recipes
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Don’t forget, if you make these healthy cranberry muffins, leave a comment and rating below!
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Healthy Cranberry Orange Muffins
Description
Ingredients
- 2 cups (200g) fresh cranberries
- 2 cups (226g) white whole-wheat flour or regular whole-wheat flour
- 2 tablespoons (14g) cornstarch or arrowroot starch
- 1 teaspoon (4g) baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon (3g) baking soda
- ½ teaspoon (2.5g) kosher salt
- ⅛ teaspoon cloves, optional
- 1 cup (227g) plain whole-milk Greek yogurt*
- ⅓ cup (67g) extra-virgin olive oil, or melted coconut oil
- ½ cup (156g) pure maple syrup
- 2 large eggs (100g)
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh orange zest, divided
- 2 teaspoons (9g) pure vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon turbinado sugar
Instructions
- Heat oven to 425°F (218°C). Line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake liners then coat liners with nonstick spray.
- In a food processor, process cranberries until chopped, about 10 pulses; set aside.
- Whisk together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and cloves in a large bowl, set aside.
- Whisk together yogurt, oil, maple syrup, eggs, 2 teaspoons orange zest, and vanilla until smooth.
- Add yogurt mixture to flour mixture and mix until mostly incorporated but some pockets of flour remain.
- Gently fold chopped cranberries into batter just until combined.
- Divide batter (it will be thick) between prepared muffin cups, about a heaping ¼ cup per muffin cup. Combine turbinado sugar with remaining teaspoon orange zest and sprinkle evenly over cups of batter.
- Bake muffins 5 minutes at 425°F (218°C) then, keeping muffins in oven, reduce oven temperature to 350°F (177°C) and bake until a toothpick inserted in the centers comes out clean, 16–18 minutes more. Total bake time is about 21–23 minutes.
- (For mini muffins, bake 11–14 minutes at 350°F (177°C).
- Transfer muffin tin to a wire rack and cool 5 minutes, then transfer muffins from pan to wire rack to cool completely.
- Store cooled muffins at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 2 days, or in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
Hi Lauren
These look so yummy. I can’t wait to try them but do you have measurements in metric for people in other parts of the world. Oh, and do the muffins stick to the cupcake liners? It does with some other recipes. Thanks
Hi Eleanor, I just updated the recipe with gram measurements. These do tend to stick to the paper liners. I haven’t tested these without the paper liners, but if you grease the muffin tin well you could avoid the sticking to the paper.
Let me know how it goes!
These muffins are delicious and it’s awesome that they are healthy too! I used whole wheat flour, coconut oil and honey instead of maple syrup. At first I was worried the batter was going to too thick, but they came out perfect! Thank you for the recipe!
Hi Karly, I’m so happy to hear you enjoyed these muffins!! Thanks for sharing your substitutions, those will be helpful for other readers.
I can’t find fresh cranberries near me, would these work out ok with dried cranberries?
Can you find frozen cranberries? I would recommend using frozen cranberries in place of fresh. Fresh or frozen will add some much needed moisture, while dried will create a very thick, dry batter.
You can either use the cranberries frozen, or thaw them ahead of time. Either way should work!
I hope that helps!
So delicious! They are beautiful!
These look delicious, but could I suggest that you remove the links for equipment with photos from the printable recipe? There is no way to take that out of the printable version and it adds almost half a page of wasted space. I understand the need for affiliate links, but the photos take up excess space wasted when printing the recipe.
Hi Stacy,
We are in the process of updating the design of our recipe card on our site, but each and every card needs to be updated manually to ensure all of the information is transferred correctly. As you will see in our new recipe cards (like in this whole wheat muffin recipe https://zestfulkitchen.com/healthy-whole-wheat-muffin-recipe/) those equipment images are not there for this exact reason.
Thanks for your comment and patience as we work through and update 700 recipes.
I subbed the syrup with honey and instead of the sugar topping I made an orange glaze with orange zest and juice and powdered sugar…. These muffins are amazing!!!! Love them ❤️
I’m happy to hear that honey worked well! So glad you enjoyed them!
Can you use buttermilk instead of Greek yogurt?
Hi Mia, I haven’t tested this, but I think it should work. I would use 1/2 cup buttermilk instead of 1 cup Greek yogurt. If the batter seems overly thick, add additional buttermilk by tablespoon as needed. Let me know how it goes!
I just made these, store didn’t have fresh cranberries I was worried to just use dried so I soaked them in bourbon for about 45 minutes. Oh my! They were delicious and still moist! Don’t bake as long I knew I better check sooner.
Absolutely delicious! Perfect muffin. Will definitely be making every year at holiday time. Used 1c gf flour and 1c almond flour – perfect! Kids and hubby agree.
I’m SO happy to hear this turned out well with a combo of GF flour and almond flour!
I don’t usually comment. Let alone a second time. These truly are delicious. Making them again because we all can’t stop thinking about them. All the stars!!!