On Canadian Thanksgiving, this past October, my niece Claudia wowed everyone with her Sausage and Cranberry Stuffing Muffins. Everyone all around was exclaiming “Wow! These are beautiful!” and rightfully so! Compare these holiday hued muffins, each tucked into their own pretty wrapping with their red cranberries cutting through the shades of brown from the beautifully caramelized sausage and toasty bread VS a casserole of monocolored beige. Although the monocolored beige stuffings and dressings are often very delicious, these muffins were also more complex in flavour and complex is always what you want! Well, at least when it comes to flavours and less so when it comes to people.
These were perfectly balanced with the mix of the sweet dried & tart fresh cranberries and the savouriness of the sausage, in a neat portable form! There’s just something unattractive about a mound of slop on your plate, don’t you agree? Stuffing muffins! Problem solved!
So obviously, I inquired about the recipe. She got the idea from Pinterest, you know, the inspiration for all things 😉 and then adjusted it to her tastes. When I posted a picture of them on my Instagram account, my DM’s exploded! Everyone wanted the recipe and I know that we are now way beyond both Canadian and American Thanksgivings, we are in time for Christmas! So I apologize for delaying and forgetting and remembering again, here it is.
Enjoy!
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muffins
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Ingredients
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- Dice 2 large yellow onions and remove the casing of 3 of the 6 sausages ( the 3 others will be used as the larger chunks)
- Fry up the diced yellow onions and loose sausage until cooked. Once cooked, remove them to a bowl and set aside
- In a saucepan set to medium, combine the stuffing mixes with the chicken broth.
- For 3 boxes you will need about 1L of chicken broth for a good consistency, keep folding the mix until the bread crumbs are well soaked. Trust the process, it’ll be perfect.
- Combine 1 cup of dried cranberries, 1 cup of fresh cranberries (or frozen), the onion and ground sausage mixture into the stuffing mix and until evenly dispersed. (Be careful not squash the fresh cranberries! )
- Ensuring the mixture has sufficiently cooled, add 3 raw eggs into the above mixture and fold. This will help the muffin mix to bind once cooked in the oven.
- With the 3 remaining sausages, break up each sausage evenly into 6 chunks.
- Fry them up using butter or oil to brown and caramelize.
- Prepare the muffin tin by doubling the muffin liners.
- Add about 3/4 cup of stuffing mixture into each liner and top off with the caramelized sausage. (or less depending on the size of your liners)
- Bake at 350 for approximately 20 minutes or until fully cooked and browned on top. Again this depends on the size of your liners. You can try the toothpick method like you would with a traditional muffin.
- Also, the muffins will continue to cook once out of the oven. Everything is cooked except for the egg so as long as it is set, it’s fine.
You can also sub with your favourite stuffing recipe! As long as there are similar portions and as long as there’s enough egg to bind the mixture together, it’ll be great.
