Orange & Cranberry Muffins

SERVES: 10

Ingredients:

1 medium orange

135g wholemeal flour

30g rolled oats

25ml rapeseed or sunflower oil

60ml orange juice or milk

2 tablespoons brown sugar or maple syrup

1 large egg

1tsp ground ginger

1tsp baking powder

50g dried cranberries

50g pumpkin seeds

Recipe Summary

These are incredibly easy to make: you throw all of the ingredients into a blender, (including a fresh orange with its skin on) and off you go. If you don’t have a food processor or blender you could use a cheap stick blender just as easily.

Each muffin provides almost a third of you daily vitamin C requirements and around 10% or your fibre needs. The pumpkin seeds and rapeseed oil provide a reasonable source of anti-inflammatory omega 3. Feel free to experiment with adding in different nuts, dried fruit and seeds or leave them out altogether. You could also use gluten free flour to make these muffins.

My top tip for arthritis-friendly baking is to use silicone muffin cases and an ice cream scoop to dole out the muffin mix between cases.

Method:

Wash the orange and chop it (skin and all) into 8 rough pieces.

Put all the ingredients, except the dried fruit and nuts, into a blender or food processor and whizz together. Blend until it is the consistency of porridge. Stir in the cranberries and pumpkin seeds.

Divide the mixture between 10 muffin cases (placed in a muffin pan). Bake for 20-25 minutes at 180C/375F or until well risen and golden brown.