German Muffin Recipe with Cranberries and Simple Orange Zest (2024)

This is a delicious German muffin recipe with cranberry orange accents you can whip up in very little time! These muffins look as good as they taste with the fruit and nuts serving as both visual garnish and tasty components of this dessert.

What is a German muffin?

A German muffin is much like any muffin, with the addition of dried fruit (traditionally raisins and orange zest), ground almonds (I used slivered as they look nice), and rum. The orange zest makes them taste rather festive, but of course you can make these year round.

As is the case with most recipes, feel free to adapt these muffins as you like based on what you and your family enjoy eating.

Note: if you are at high altitude, check out these high altitude baking tips from the Colorado State University Extension Office. You can also refer to the tips from my high altitude banana bread muffins recipe.

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How to prevent muffins from turning out dry

Handling

1. Don’t over bake your muffins. In this case, if you own two muffin pans, you could split the dough into 18 smaller muffins and bake them for a shorter amount of time, maybe 25 minutes or so.
2. Don’t over mix the dough. Once everything is evenly combined, you don’t need to keep stirring the way you would with a yeast bread dough.

Ingredients

1. Conversely, if you are using high fiber ingredients, the dough can absorb a lot of moisture. Try getting the dough completely ready, placing it in the fridge for half an hour or so, and then stirring in a liquid like milk until it returns to the consistency it was before you put it in the fridge.
2. Oil and butter combined can help improve the fluffiness of muffins. Rather than using the whole stick of butter (1/2 cup), you could do 1/4 cup butter (for flavor) and 1/4 cup oil (for texture). Oil and solid fats you can swap out for the same volume of the other. Currently I only have olive oil and coconut oil in my house, both of which have a fairly strong flavor. For this reason, I only used butter, although the coconut flavor would have probably been fine in this German muffin recipe. You can also try adding a little extra fat to improve the texture. One to two tablespoons can make a big difference in the outcome.
3. Instead of milk, you could substitute buttermilk, sour cream, or plain yogurt for a richer dough. If you use sour cream or yogurt, you can generally use half the amount, unlike with fats as discussed above. For example, if a recipe calls for 1/4 cup of milk (like this one), you could use 2 tablespoons of sour cream instead and they should come out with a similar consistency.

How to zest an orange

1. Wash your orange and let it dry. Try to use a fresh one where the peel hasn’t dried out too much.
2. If you own a zester, by all means use that. You can simply use a vegetable peeler, as I did, or even a knife if you are careful.
3. Peel off small strips or curls of orange peel until you get at least your one tablespoon of orange zest for this recipe. If you want to zest more, that would be a nice addition to these German muffins. Just think of how small you would want your piece of orange zest to be in a bite of food and you will be on the right track.

This process may sound familiar from when I discussed zesting a lemon. I found that the orange I used was much easier to zest than the lemon, although for both I tried to pick really pretty looking fresh citrus that hadn’t dried out yet. This is great news if you love oranges!

German Muffin Recipe Ingredients

Before you begin, you will need:

Edible Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of unsalted butter (1 stick), softened
• 1/2 cup of sugar, plus more to garnish
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 Tbsp rum
• 1/4 cup of milk
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 cups of flour
• 1/3 cup slivered almonds, unsalted, plus more to garnish
• 1 Tbsp orange zest
• Dried cranberries, to garnish (optional)

Tools

• Mixing bowl and (preferably wooden) spoon.
• Muffin tin (liners optional)
• Something to zest the orange (I used a vegetable peeler.)
• Measuring spoons and cups

German Muffin Recipe

1. First, blend the sugar into the butter with the back of a wooden spoon.
2. Then, add the eggs, milk, rum, and vanilla extract and stir to combine.
3. Next, add in the cinnamon and baking powder and stir until thoroughly mixed.
4. Now, add in the flour slowly, stirring as you go to avoid clumps.
5. When your dough is looking almost ready, you can preheat the oven to 350°.
6. While the oven is preheating (or as the first step), zest your orange. If you own a zester, great, but I just used a vegetable peeler to peel of small strips of orange peel.
7. Once your dough is even, add in the almonds and orange zest. If you want to add dried cranberries or raisins to the dough, now is the time. Stir until evenly distributed.
8. Either grease your muffin tin or use muffin liners, as I did.
9. Fill your muffin tins 1/2 to 2/3 full until you are out of dough. I got 12 muffins.
10. At this point, add extra almonds and dried cranberries to the top of each muffin as a garnish, and sprinkle sugar over the tops with a spoon for more photogenic muffins. This step is optional but fun!
11. Once the oven is ready, bake for 30 to 34 minutes or until golden on top. Let cool and serve!

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Variations on this German Muffin Recipe

Traditionally, German muffins have raisins mixed in. If you wanted to stick with the cranberry orange theme you could mix in dried cranberries instead of just using them as a garnish.

Using ground almonds for this recipe is more traditional than slivered. You could even use ground almonds for the dough and still garnish with slivered almonds.

You can certainly omit the rum if you want.

Additional fruit like chopped apples or dried cherries would enhance these fruity muffins.

You could substitute walnuts or another nut of choice for the almonds as well.

Adding applesauce or prunes would make these German muffins even nicer in consistency!

German Muffin Recipe with Cranberries and Orange Zest

Yield:12 muffins

Prep Time:15 minutes

Cook Time:34 minutes

Total Time:49 minutes

See Also

Midwest Living Prizewinning Reader Recipes

These delicious cranberry orange German muffins are quick to whip up and make a lovely dessert (or breakfast)!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of unsalted butter (1 stick), softened
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 Tbsp rum
• 1/4 cup of milk
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 cups of flour
• 1/3 cup slivered almonds, unsalted
• 1 Tbsp orange zest
• Dried cranberries, to garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. First, blend the sugar into the butter with the back of a wooden spoon.
2. Then, add the eggs, milk, rum, and vanilla extract and stir to combine.
3. Next, add in the cinnamon and baking powder and stir until thoroughly mixed.
4. Now, add in the flour slowly, stirring as you go to avoid clumps.
5. When your dough is looking almost ready, you can preheat the oven to 350°.
6. While the oven is preheating (or as the first step), zest your orange. If you own a zester, great, but I just used a vegetable peeler to peel of small strips of orange peel.
7. Once your dough is even, add in the almonds and orange zest. If you want to add dried cranberries or raisins to the dough, now is the time. Stir until evenly distributed.
8. Either grease your muffin tin or use muffin liners, as I did.
9. Fill your muffin tins 1/2 to 2/3 full until you are out of dough. I got 12 muffins.
10. At this point, add extra almonds and dried cranberries to the top of each muffin as a garnish, and sprinkle sugar over the tops with a spoon for more photogenic muffins. This step is optional but fun!
11. Once the oven is ready, bake for 30 to 34 minutes or until golden on top. Let cool and serve!

Nutrition Information:

Yield: 12Serving Size: 1
Amount Per Serving:Calories: 221Total Fat: 10gSaturated Fat: 5gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 4gCholesterol: 52mgSodium: 98mgCarbohydrates: 28gFiber: 1gSugar: 11gProtein: 4g

I hope you like this German muffin recipe!