Essense of Sumo Orange Muffins

My co-worker brought in some home-made blueberry muffins this week. They were delicious and I realized that in all my baking endevours, I've never attempted muffins before. So I went straight for my Pastry Queen book and settled on the Essence of Orange Muffins, a recipe that was tested in the earlier days of Project Pastry Queen, before I joined the group.

It was the perfect opportunity to introduce our readers to a newfound discovery: the Sumo Citrus. This is quite possibly one of our favorite fruits. I encountered the Sumo from another co-worker, who led me to Whole Foods where you are greeted, upon entry, by an extremely large display of the now in-season Sumos, a large, tangerine-like fruit that has all the yummy goodness of tangerine but is easy to peel and eat. It's a rather expensive fruit, coming in at $2.99 a pound at Whole Foods. But it's worth every penny, in our opinion. We will be quite sad once Sumo season is over. I juiced 2 Sumos for these Essence of Orange Muffins.

Essence of Orange Muffins

adapted from Pastry Queen

Ingredients
For the muffins

1 cup milk
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1/2 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
2 sticks butter, melted and cooled slightly
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I substituted half the AP flour for whole wheat pastry flour)
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
zest of 1 orange

For the streusel
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons softened butter

Directions
Preheat oven to 350. Prepare two muffin tins with non-stick spray or muffin liners. Whisk together the milk, OJ, sour cream, eggs, and butter. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and stir just until the flour is incorporated.



Gently fold the orange zest into the batter. I decided to separate the batter into two and to incorporate two fruits I had on hand, strawberries and nectarines.



I knew the nectarines were going to give me some trouble. They were quite hard and I had a feeling the fruit would just sink to the bottom of the muffin and still be raw. I ended up cooking down the nectarine in some butter and sugar to soften it before folding into the batter.



 Spoon the batter into the muffin pans, filling each cup ~3/4 full.



In a small bowl, mix together the remaining 1/4 cup flour, 1/4 cup white sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon, and the butter to make a crumbly mixture.



Sprinkle this generously over the tops of the muffin batter.



Bake ~25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out with moist crumbs attached. Cool the muffins in the pans for 5 minutes before removing and transferring to a cooling rack.

I realized that strawberries should probably be avoided when baking. They released too much liquid and compromised the texture of the batter. While the strawberry-orange muffins were pretty to look at, the wet strawberries caused alot of dense pockets and really took away from the lightness of the batter. In contrast, the nectarine-orange muffins didn't look too exciting but the dry fruit actually made for a fluffier and lighter muffin. These were definitely my favorite of the two. Overall, a solid recipe and I'm looking forward to trying different variations. Check out Confections of a Foodie Bride for a Cranberry-Orange version. Pink Parsley also had a great idea for a lemon and blueberry combination.