RED-ORANGE CURRANT MUFFINS

     I bought one tiny basket of red currants from the Farmer's Market when we had our second farm breakfast, thinking the six of us could get through those littly "poison berries" as Stephanie so suspiciously called them as she waited for a guinea pig not to die before she tried one. So no one died, but we still didn't finish them. No problem, give me a few days with them, but still, I only ate a few here and a few there. These little suckers are super pretty, but a little tart. I can't eat them voraciously as I can say cherries or blueberries. 

    So what to do. Waste no want not. I searched the interweb and came upon a lot of jams and sauces for meats with currants, and lot of recipes that called for pounds and pounds of currants. Then I found an orange currant cake. Getting somewhere. But I had just made a peach cobbler the day before and its just ridiculous to make so much dessert. Then I found in a comment on this horticulture blog a recipe for red currant muffins from Anne P, who has this knitting/spinning/chickening/mothering/chocolate blog. I was planning on straight using the recipe then just adding some orange zest because that sounded nice, but the batter was cookie dough dry (a metric to US measurement conversion might have cause this), so I had to moisten it a bit and I ended up entirely morphing the recipe.

     So I would aptly call this a recipe inspired by Ann P from that long blog above. Thanks Anne!

Red-Orange Currant Muffins

1 1/2 C. flour

1/2 C. sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 C. milk

1/4 C. orange juice

zest of 1 orange

1/4 C. extra virgin olive oil

1 C. red currants

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in one bowl. In another bowl cream the sugar with the eggs, then add the milk, the oil, the orange juice and the orange zest. Gently fold in the red currants. Bake in greased muffin tins for about 18-22 min in a preheated 350 degree oven.