Pumpkin Muffins with a Cream Cheese Filling

Soooooooo good! When fall rolls around I love all things pumpkin! And I’ve been known to eat cream cheese straight from the container with a spoon…. yep. I said it. So combine two of my favorite things?!

They’re pretty easy to make, you just need to plan them a bit in advance because the cream cheese filling needs to be frozen. And next time? MORE TOPPING, nom nom nom.

And to give credit where credit is due… I saw these on pinterest (of course) and adapted the recipe from Annie’s Eats. I ended up combining a few different recipes and used brown sugar for the topping.

INGREDIENTS:
For the cream cheese filling (to be made in advance!):
~8 oz brick of cream cheese
~1 cup of powdered sugar

For the muffins:
~3 cups all-purpose flour
~1 tsp of ground cinnamon
~1 tsp of ground cloves
~1 tsp of ground nutmeg
~1 heaping tbsp of pumpkin pie spice
~1 tsp of salt
~1 tsp of baking soda
~4 eggs
~2 cups of white sugar
~1 can of pumpkin puree
~1 cup of vegetable oil

For the streusel topping:
~1/2 cup of all-purpose flour
~1/4 c of brown sugar
~3/4 tsp of ground cinnamon
~1/4 tsp of salt
~4 tbsp of cold, unsalted butter

DIRECTIONS:

For the filling: there are a few different ways to prepare this. Basically you need to end up with ~24 frozen chunks… Start by combining the cream cheese and powdered sugar and blend until smooth.

Annie’s Eats transferred her mixture to plastic wrap, formed it into a log shape, wrapped it tightly in the plastic wrap, and put it in the freezer to later slice into pieces. That sounded messy to me, but I’ve never tried it, maybe it’s easy?

I lined a cookie sheet with wax paper, filled a ziploc bag with my mixture & cut off the tip of a corner (use an icing bag if you have one.. I don’t), and squirted out 24 disc-shaped pieces. I slid the entire cookie sheet in my freezer and the pieces easily popped off once I was ready for them! Freeze them until they’re firm–I left mine in for a few hours.

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

For the muffins:
Whisk together all ingredients from flour down to baking soda.

In another bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients (eggs, sugar, pumpkin, and oil).

Once blended, slowly pour in your bowl of whisked dry ingredients and continue blending until everything is mixed.

For the topping:
Whisk together all ingredients except the butter until well mixed.

Then add the butter in chunks and work together–I find this easiest to do with my hands. Once it’s mixed well and clumpy, you’re set! You might want to refrigerate this for a bit if the butter has gotten warm from your hands–the mix needs to be cool.

Putting it all together:
Line your muffin pan or spray them. Put a spoonful of muffin mix in each well… I filled some of mine too much, which made the cream cheese sit too high and it came out the top when baking. Not a big deal at all, but don’t worry about filling the muffin wells at this step… just cover the bottoms.

Then put one cream cheese chunk in each well and then cover them with the remaining muffin mix.

Sprinkle the streusel on top and bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean!

Let cool and EAT! But trust me, you won’t be able to let them cool 😉 And while they are good cold, they are aahhhh-mazing fresh out of the oven!

*If your cream cheese chunks aren’t frozen enough or are placed too high in the muffin wells, it will bubble to the top. Not a big deal, certainly still edible, just less of a “cream cheese filling” surprise in the middle. ENJOY 🙂