Cranberry Citrus Muffins

It seems to be that I notice I have most of the ingredients for some recipe or other, and by the time I get the rest, something has been eaten. Or in this case, drunk as the orange juice seems to have disappeared between our recent shopping trip and baking these. The muffins I made turned out to be good, but a little lacking in flavor and sweetness. Good texture tho. Light and fluffy!  I altered the recipe off the back of the Bob's Red Mill biscuit and baking mix a bit, but it's really good with topping. I was not expecting these to rise as much as they did since I have heard horror stories about baking gluten-free, nor to be as fluffy as they are. I was pleasantly surprised.

2 cups Bobs biscuit and baking mix
2 tblspn Meyer Lemon Olive Oil
1 heaping cup of sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 lemon
1/2 cup cranberry apple juice
1/2 cup lemon-lime soda
1 heaping cup dried cranberries

Whisk oil, egg, sugar and vanilla. Continue whisking while slowly adding juice of 1 lemon, cran-apple juice, and lemon lime soda. Slowly stir in biscuit and baking mix until fully mixed, then add extra lemon-lime soda as needed until the consistency matches a slightly thick muffin mix.

Next time I'm going to replace 1/2 the sugar with something less fattening like apple sauce, and I'll use orange juice instead of the cran-apple, but I figured I was already replacing something in this recipe, why mess with it more. By the way, if you're watching your weight, you may want to use diet soda. I can't use most diet sodas for this trick as they usually have sugar replacements which trigger or worsen my migraines, but I'm keeping my eyes open. Suggestions?

Carlie helped me bake these, because running around the kitchen to get ingredients and then mixing them up is still a bit beyond my abilities, especially after a week of lab tests which have left me feeling drained. No pun intended. I'm glad Carlie likes baking with me on her days off, because I was feeling the need for bread in my life this morning and ended up deciding to turn a cranberry orange bread recipe into the slightly altered muffin recipe above. I figured I can portion out muffins better than I can a loaf of bread. Plus I was curious to see how the trick of adding soda to the recipe would lighten things up. Considering how yummy these are warm, with some margarine and orange marmalade, I think I may need to freeze some up to make sure we don't eat too many at once. We'll see how they hold up to the freezer.