Cranberry and Orange Breakfast Muffins

Cranberry and orange breakfast muffins are in the 'healthy' section of Jo Pratt's In the Mood for Love (reviewed below). I liked the idea of muffins for breakfast and particularly the possibility of healthy muffins for breakfast - I am not one to turn down a chocolate dessert, but I draw the line at naughty breakfasts because a) I like the idea of starting the day off well and b) I never enjoy breakfast that much anyway so it would be a waste of calories. I usually eat homemade granola with bio-active yoghurt, which I make every few weeks and store in an air-tight container; the granola is full of seeds and grains that I imagine can only do me good. We ran out of granola yesterday and instead of making more, I decided to try out these muffins, billed 'healthy' because they contain wholemeal flour (fibre), linseeds (Omega-3: good for high blood pressure and cholesterol), sunflower and pumpkin seeds (minerals and protein), cranberries and orange (vitamin C).

Recipe:

175g wholemeal self-raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
5 tablespoons wheatbran
2 tablespoons linseed
3 tablespoons sunflower and/or pumpkin seeds
75g soft brown sugar
finely grated zest of a large orange
75g dried cranberries
3 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 large eggs
250ml natural yoghurt
1 tablespoon rolled oats

Place nine large muffin cases in a muffin tin and preheat the oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5.
Stir together the flour, baking powder, wheatbran, linseed, sunflower/pumpkin seeds (I used both), sugar, orange zest and cranberries. Add the oil, eggs and yoghurt and mix until just combined. Spoon into the muffin cases and scatter a few oats over each one.
Bake for 25 minutes or until risen and cracking slightly; cool a little, but eat warm.
To eat later, leave the muffins until cold and store in an airtight container for up to a couple of days. You can also freeze the muffins and then defrost overnight and heat through in a low oven before eating.

I only used half a tablespoon of oil because that was all I had left; I used both pumpkin and sunflower seeds.

The verdict? These were really good, although I had feared for them given the wholemeal self-raising flour (which sounded a bit too virtuous to me). It would be good to make a double batch of these and store them in the freezer for breakfast emergencies!