Cranberry Fun!

Friday I scored several free bags of slightly mushy Wisconsin cranberries from the co-op.  I initially had cranberry jam/jelly in mind, but I still have way too much jam to make any more.  Yet.

So instead I threw together an improvised cranberry ginger soda and a batch of gluten free cranberry-ginger-walnut muffins.  I LOVE how pretty the cranberry soda looks and after a few days, I'll let you know how it tastes.  You'll notice that we re-used a Fentiman's bottle this time- It's because we got a bottle capper!  We always thought the bottle cappers would be really expensive or complicated, but it means that we can bottle smaller sized bottles to give away and that we can re-use bottles instead of ever buying new ones.  So it will definitely save us money in the long run.

The muffins turned out pretty tasty.  They're not strongly flavored with any one thing, but a combo of citrus, nuts, cranberries and ginger.  Oh, and they're as sweet as cupcakes because I pretty much just swapped a few ingredients from my stand-by GF cupcake recipe!


Cranberry Muffins
1 cup millet flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
1.5 tsp. xanthan gum
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. powdered ginger
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 cup orange juice
1 cup nondairy milk
Zest of 1 orange
1/2 cup cranberries, roughly chopped
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350F.  Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.  Whisk together the millet flour, rice flour, starch, xanthan gum, baking powder, baking soda, salt and ginger.  In a separate bowl whisk together the oil, sugars, vanilla, OJ, milk and zest. Add the liquid/sugar mixture to the flour and stir until thoroughly combined.  Fold in cranberries and walnuts.  Spoon batter into liners until about 3/4 full. Bake about 20 minutes or until the cakes are solid and golden colored.  Allow to cool a couple minutes in the pan, then remove from muffin tin to cool completely.  Store in an air-tight container once they are fully cooled.