Orange, Date and Walnut Muffins {SRC}

It's Secret Recipe Club time again!  For those of you unfamiliar with the club, every month we are assigned a blog and must make one recipe from that blog.  But we must keep it a secret who we were assigned.  Then on reveal day we all post our recipes and find out who was assigned who.

This month I was assigned Everyday Insanity written by Cindy.  Cindy has a large family with five brothers, 6 children and 14 grandchildren!  My father also came from a big family with 4 brothers and 9 sisters.  I'm always amazed how mothers are able to handle such big families when I sometimes feel so overwhelmed with just 2 little boys.

As I was browsing Cindy's blog I saw that she has a lot of cookie recipes on her blog...my kids (like most other kids) love cookies and it was one of my father's favourite things to eat.  I was all set to make Cindy's Everything But The Kitchen Sink Cookies but things have been so busy lately and it kept getting delayed.  Finally I realized I didn't have time to bake cookies.  Cindy has many other great recipes and one of those are her Orange Date Muffins.  We all love dates and we had a lot of oranges from CostCo so it was a perfect choice.  I made a couple changes, used oil instead of melted butter and walnuts instead of pecans.  I have to say these were excellent!!!  Fresh out of the oven they were very soft and moist.  Cindy served hers with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting but I left mine un-iced and they were delicious!  I think these would also be great with the dates replaced with cranberries or chocolate chips.  Next time I think I will also add some orange zest to the batter and replace some of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour.  Thank you Cindy for a great recipe...I will be making your Everything But The Kitchen Sink Cookies very soon! Please drop by Cindy's blog and check out her recipes!

Orange, Date and Walnut Muffins
Adapted from Everyday Insanity

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup chopped dates
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 orange, peeled
1 egg
extra milk, as needed
1/4 cup canola oil

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Grease muffin tin (I used liners to make cleanup easy).

In a food processor, chop 1 whole, peeled orange (I used my mini chopper).  Measure the orange juice and if there is less than 1 cup, top up with milk to make 1 cup.

In a large bowl, combine all-purpose flour, sugar, dates, walnuts, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

In a small bowl, combine pureed orange, oil and egg.  Add to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Using an ice cream scoop fill prepared muffin tin.

Bake 14-16 minutes.



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