After having brownies for breakfast two days in the past week, I decided it was high time to get something more appropriate in the house. Nothing at the grocery store appealed to me, so I came back home to bake something. Fortunately for me, my buddy Jessica over at A Singleton in the Kitchen has been sharing muffin recipes every Monday as part of an event she calls Muffin Mondays. I’ve bookmarked many of the recipes as she’s posted them so I just needed to figure out which one I’d try first. I kept going back to the first recipe she shared – cranberry vanilla muffins – they’d appealed to me immediately when I’d seen them back in February and even though cranberries are no longer in season, I had a bag stashed in my freezer just begging to be used. Besides, I think we can all agree that cranberries are a bit easier to justify than brownies when it comes to breakfast…
I adapted the original recipe just slightly based on Jessica’s recommendations. The recipe calls for vanilla sugar, which the author makes by combining half of a vanilla bean with a cup of sugar in a food processor. I substituted 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract for the 1/2 vanilla bean. I actually had vanilla sugar in my kitchen (which I’d made previously by tossing used vanilla beans into a container of sugar) but I wanted to see how the vanilla extract substitution would work. The only other change I made to the recipe was to substitute 4 tablespoons of nonfat Greek yogurt for 4 tablespoons of the butter. It’s not a change I’ve ever made to a muffin recipe but Jessica said she does it regularly with good results and I’m definitely in favor of lightening things up where possible.
The verdict? They were very good muffins! The batter was delicious and just a bit sweet and the tartness of the cranberries was a nice contrast to that sweetness. The yogurt for butter substitution worked perfectly – the muffins were moist, fluffy and not at all lacking in flavor. My only minor change the next time I make the muffins might be to cut back a bit on the cranberries. Granted I’ve only tried two muffins so far, but I thought the ratio of cranberry to muffin was high. Still, these are a great breakfast treat and one I definitely recommend trying if you have cranberries leftover in your freezer!
Cranberry Vanilla Muffins
adapted from Cold Weather Cooking by Sarah Leah Chase (as seen on A Singleton in the Kitchen)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
If I worked at it for a bit, I could definitely rationalize brownies as healthy…I mean in a way, it’s really a flat chocolate muffin.
These Cranberry vanilla muffins look yummy. I will have to give these a try as well…thanks for sharing.
Yummie! they looks so good i def need to make them 🙂
Wait, you aren’t supposed to eat brownies for breakfast?!?
Great looking muffins. I love cranberries, have some in the freezer right now and may have to try these on Monday when I am off.
looks great!
iza:)
These look so delicious! My husband would argue that brownies are a perfect breakfast food.
You had me at cranberry, my favorite!
I actually do have 1 lonely bag of cranberries left in my freezer that I have been wanting to use up. I just can’t decided what to make. I love muffins though and I think these might just be the winners.
They look great, Tracey!
the muffins look marvelous! Great weekend treat!
these looking incredible! I love the use of yogurt in the recipe and cranberries in muffins are really overlooked, everyone always reaches for blueberries….great job with this recipe!!
Those look wonderfully moist and very delicious. Also have some crans in the freezer. YUM!!
You can have brownies for b’fast as long as they don’t have frosting!! 😉
beautiful, clean photos and nice color in the muffins! mmmm
What gorgeous photos! Love seeing the sugar on top in great detail 🙂
Cranberries are one of my favorites, plus vanilla! This sounds heavenly!
I saw these on Jessica’s site as well and marked them to try…they just look and sound so yummy. Your photos are really wonderful. Need to pull out some of my overflow frozen cranberries and get to this one soon.
I LOVE cranberries and vanilla paired together! These look fab!
I’m so glad that you made these muffins! I really enjoyed the whole cranberry vanilla combo. I still think that a brownie for breakfast isn’t necessarily a bad thing :).
I’m a little inexperienced as a cook so this may have been clear to everyone else but when you say you substituted 4 tablespoons of butter with 4 tablespoons of plain greek yogurt but the recipe you posted had both of those. did the original recipe call for 8 tablespoons of butter and you just split it?
Also is that something you can do for a lot of baking recipes? I’m always interested in ways to lighten things up
These muffins are making me wish I still had cranberries in my freezer, they look terrific!
It’s hard to not eat things like brownies for breakfast when you constantly have baked goods around.
Hi Lyndsey,
Sorry for the confusion – yes, the recipe I posted includes my modifications. The original recipe did have 8 tablespoons of butter so I used 4 tablespoons of butter and 4 tablespoons of nonfat Greek yogurt.
As for subbing Greek yogurt for butter in other recipes – it’s not something I do very often so I can’t speak from personal experience, but I have heard many other bloggers talk about doing it successfully.
Thanks for stopping by!
Tracey 🙂
These muffins look really good, thanks for sharing and I think that cranberry and vanilla is a great combo!
yum, these look great! although now i’d want a brownie and a muffin. 😉
Ooh, those look yummy. I have a ton of cranberries in my freezer, and should probably use up some of them.
I couldn’t agree more and I like how you incorporate the vanilla beans on this, it just looks absolutely beautiful. Definitely going to give it a try, thanks for the recipe.
I love vanilla and cranberry — these look really good.
I’ll have to make these while the cranberries are still around in abundance! They look wonderful, thanks!
These look delish! I am definitely making these this week. 🙂
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I made these the other day! DELICIOUS!! Thanks!
These are INCREDIBLE! I just made some, and am planning a repeat performance soon. I used 2 1/2 cups of just barely non-frozen whole cranberries and added 1 orange’s worth of zest to the batter just before adding the cranberries- so tasty! Thanks so much!