Cranberry Avocado Muffins

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

2. Place your chopped, dried cranberries into a bowl of warm water for about 10 minutes. Then drain them and set aside.

3. Next, toast your walnuts. Place them in a skillet over medium heat, stirring every minute or so. When they get nice and brown and fragrant, they’re done. Keep an eye on them. If you have the heat too high or don’t stir often enough, they’ll burn and get bitter. And then you’ll get annoyed and have to start over. Not that I’d know. Once they’re toasted, set them aside to cool.

4. Mix together the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, and cinnamon in a fairly large bowl. In a second bowl, mash your avocado. My favorite method is a potato masher, since it’s pretty easy and effective.

5. Once the avocado is mashed, add the other wet ingredients—milk, coconut oil and egg. Also, take the fruit of the lemon that you have left over from zesting and squeeze the juice into the bowl with the avocado. Stir until well combined.

6. Add your wet ingredients into your flour mixture. Stir until just combined. Add the walnuts, cranberries, and lemon zest and stir as little as possible to get everything mixed together.

7. Place your liners into a muffin tin. Now listen—if I were reading this and it called for muffin liners and I didn’t have them, know what I’d say? Screw it. And then I would make these and put them into a lightly greased tin and think I was fine. And you know what I would end up with? A pile of muffin chunks and crumbs and the invention of at least 3 new swear words. Trust me—use the liners.

I hear you scoffing – DO WHAT, I SAY. Or don’t and eat your muffins in tiny chunks, I don’t care.

8. Fill each liner a little more than 3/4 full. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until the tops are lightly browned and a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Now, the ingredients here mean that the inside will never really be dry, and that’s okay. You may split them open and think they’re not done, but they are. When you taste them, you’ll see.

9. One last thing – I have recently discovered the joy that is a grilled muffin. You need to do this. Split a muffin and butter each side. Place the muffin, buttered-side down, into a skillet over medium-high heat. Smush it down a little to make sure as much of the buttered surface is touching the pan as possible. After 3-4 minutes, your muffin will have a hot, crunchy, buttered crust. It’s amazing.

Makes 12 muffins. And possibly 3 cusswords.