Orange Muffins [Guest Post]

Special thanks to Ethan for his guest post today about orange muffins! He's got a kitchen and the real life schedule and necessity to cook, so he does a lot more than I do during the school year. Take it away!

Guest post here by Ethan, an avid follower of Common Scents Baking.

I made orange muffins out of dessert cookbook I picked up when I spent a summer in Bolivia. The recipe uses the juice of two oranges, which in Bolivia, are probably far cheaper than the cup of sugar that serves as the rest of the sweetening. When I first made the recipe, I used a loaf pan, since I didn’t have muffin tins. 

Orange Loaf, made in Bolivia!

Today, I made them as muffins and they were just as good. Recommendation: fill muffin tins about 2/3 of the way to leave room for the baking powder rising action. Would also be good with an orange frosting, but are fine plain—not too sweet!

Strangely, the result didn’t really brown either time I made the recipe. Maybe the orange juice, which did color the batter slightly yellow, inhibited browning.

Cooking playlist: Danilo Perez’s two most recent albums, Panama 500 and Providencia, plus a smattering of a new Spotify playlist I made called “Miles Davis through 1970” (yes it took the length of two albums to bake and clean up…)

feat. Tag sale tin canisters

Here is the recipe, translated as best as I could into English:

Pastelitos de Naranja (Orange Cupcakes)
Makes 15-20 muffins or one loaf

Ingredients:

• 4 tbsp butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 ½ cups sifted flour
• 3 eggs
• ½ cup milk
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp orange essence or juice of 2 
• 1 spoonful grated orange peel

Method: 

1. Preheat oven to 350° F
2. Separate the eggs and beat the whites to form stiff peaks
3. In a mixing bowl, soften the butter, add the sugar, and cream together
4. Add the milk and egg yolks bit by bit
5. Add the flour, baking soda, salt, orange peel and juice, and mix well
6. Add the beaten egg whites and mix to obtain a uniform dough
7. Pour the dough into a greased muffin tin and bake for 20 minutes.

P.S. Here's the recipe in Spanish, if you're interested: