Orangeness

Happy Friday and Happy Easter too this weekend!

I’m still thinking about those delicious cranberry bliss bars we made last time. Those were sooooo good. An ingredient that we had to buy in order to make those bliss bars was orange extract. I had never baked with orange extract and since we had so much leftover we thought that we’d go on the hunt for some orangy recipes.

First of all we thought we’d do an orange take on one of our staple recipes...our fudge. Chocolate and orange are good flavours to pair together so instead of using vanilla in our easy three step fudge, we just added orange extract.

To remind you, we melt 3 cups of chocolate chips and one can of sweetened condensed milk in the microwave for 30 sec increments, stirring in between. Then this is where we add the vanilla usually, but this time we added 2 teaspoons of orange extract. Then pour the fudge into a parchment lined 8 inch pan and chill in the fridge or freezer until firm. Remove and cut into squares.

I thought this was really smooth and delicious. I kinda liked it more than just the plain chocolate fudge, but that’s just me. I do think we could of added more of the orange extract so that would be something to take note of for next time.

Another recipe, at the urging of my dad, that we thought we’d try is mini orange muffins. We hunted for a good recipe so I found one and tweaked it to my liking.

Mini muffins are always a hit and I think with a refreshing flavour like orange, a mini muffin would be a nice bite rather than having a huge orange flavoured muffin. We made a few versions of this muffin as we experimented in the kitchen. You can leave the muffins plain or you can put on a glaze type icing which I have included below along with the muffin recipe.

Mini Orange Muffins

Ingredients:

1 cup of butter, softened

1 cup of granulated sugar

1 tbsp. vanilla

1 cup of freshly squeezed orange juice along with the zest (one large orange equaled a cup for us)

½ cup of sour cream (plain yogurt works fine too as that’s what we used because we had no sour cream)

2 cups of flour

2 tbsp. cornstarch

2 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

2 tsp. of orange extract

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line mini muffin tins with mini muffin liners.

In your mixing bowl, combine butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla and cream until smooth.

Then add in the orange juice, orange extract, and sour cream or yogurt. Mix until blended.

Now mix and add in your dry ingredients (flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt). Mix until incorporated and then stir in the orange zest. 

Divide the batter among the muffin cups. Fill ¾ of the way to the top. 

At this point, we decided to try adding milk chocolate chips to a few of the muffins to see what that would be like since we tried the chocolate and orange combination with the fudge.

Bake for 20 minutes.

While the mini muffins are baking, you can make the glaze if you want to have one.

Ingredients for the Glaze:

1 ¼ cup of icing sugar

¼ cup of softened cream cheese

3 tbsp. of orange juice

¼ tsp. vanilla

Pinch of salt

3 tsp.-1tbsp. of orange extract

All you need to do for this glaze is grab a small mixing bowl and combine all of the ingredients together and stir until you get a smooth lump free glaze. You can also mix up all the ingredients in a stand mixer and combine them all together that way.

By now the 20 minutes of bake time are up and the muffins should be ready. Pull them out of the oven and let them cool on a rack for just a bit. Then you can ice them if you like or leave the icing off to the side and those who want it can ice their own. With the icing on them, they do seem more like cupcakes. Both ways were really good and the addition of the chocolate chips was nice too for those who need a little chocolate in everything!