Orange Date Muffins. A great old fashioned muffin recipe featuring great orange flavour, sweet dates, optional crunchy pecans and fragrant five spice powder.

Orange Date Muffins.
Regular readers of Rock Recipes will have noticed that I have a little love affair going on with five spice powder. You will sometimes find it as Chinese Five Spice.

Ingredients for date orange muffins.
As the name suggests, it is simply a blend of five different spices. Variations occur but the most common combination is star anise, cloves, Szechuan pepper, cinnamon and ground fennel seeds.

Orange Date Muffins, perfect for a coffee break.
While it is commonly used in Chinese cooking I love to use it in baking. I use it anywhere that you would use cinnamon or any blend of baking spices.
If you don’t have it or can’t find it, you can simply substitute 1 3/4 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 tsp cloves.

Orange Date Muffins made without the paper liners.
I’ve used it in everything from these muffins to a scrumptious Apple Five Spice Tarte Tatin. It gives such a spicy fragrance and flavour to baked goods, you will love it.

Orange Date Muffins
Experiment yourself with this amazing spice blend, perhaps in this recipe for my favorite Apple Cinnamon Sticky Buns.

Wet ingredients mixed together.

Dry ingredients sifted together.

Fold batter until no lumps are visible

Fold in dates and pecans.

Orange Date Muffins ready for the oven.
Love a great muffin recipe? We’ve put together a collection of our Top 25 Fan Favourite Muffin Recipes. You may be surprised to see which delicious, wholesome muffin hit the #1 spot!
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Orange Date Muffins
Orange Date Muffins. A great old fashioned muffin recipe featuring great orange flavour, sweet dates and fragrant five spice powder.
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp five spice powder ( or 1 3/4 tsp cinnamon & 1/4 tsp cloves)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup orange juice
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp finely minced orange zest
- 1 cup dates, chopped
- 1/2 cup pecans, toasted and chopped (optional)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Stir together The flour, baking powder, baking soda, five spice powder and salt. Set aside.
Beat together the sugar, egg, orange juice, milk, oil vanilla extract and orange zest.
Fold dry ingredients into the wet mixture. When the dry ingredients are almost incorporated, add and fold in the dates and pecans
Spoon batter into greased or paper lined muffin pans and bake for 20- 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack or serve warm from the oven.
Notes
Toast the nuts in a baking pan in a preheated 350 degrees F oven for 10 minutes. Toss the nuts once at the 5 minute mark and return to the oven.
Nutrition Information
Yield
12Serving Size
1 large muffinAmount Per Serving Calories 233Total Fat 9gSaturated Fat 1gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 7gCholesterol 16mgSodium 296mgCarbohydrates 37gFiber 2gSugar 17gProtein 4g
The nutritional information provided is automatically calculated by third party software and is meant as a guideline only. Exact accuracy is not guaranteed. For recipes where all ingredients may not be used entirely, such as those with coatings on meats, or with sauces or dressings for example, calorie & nutritional values per serving will likely be somewhat lower than indicated.
Val Arnold
Thursday 13th of May 2021
Hi Barry will it make any difference to the muffin if I omit the pecans?
Lise
Wednesday 12th of May 2021
Just bake your muffins, they are very good. I cook them at 325F like you said in the recipe.. Thank you for your good recipe.
Orange Date Muffins - All Foods Magazine
Tuesday 11th of May 2021
[…] post Orange Date Muffins appeared first on Rock […]
Suzanne
Saturday 3rd of April 2021
Thank you for the recipe. The 5 spice was perfect in these muffins.
Trudy Schouten
Wednesday 27th of March 2019
I found the 5 Spice flavour overwhelmed the orange,,next time I'll cut it down a bit. Otherwise, a wonderful, moist muffin! Thank you, Barry!