Wowza! Have I got a recipe to share with you!!!
Last Saturday, we went to a little french bakery called Amelie’s. I was eying 2 beautiful things…the salted caramel brownie & pumpkin cream cheese muffin. Being the smart woman I am, I asked my hubby if I could get both and “we could split the brownie.” 😉 heehee…you like my style, yes? I knew I wanted to try the brownie because it was raved about in this post by Pioneer Woman. It was delish. (And, lucky for me, my hubby didn’t like his half too much, so I got a whole brownie…minus 1 bite.)
But today, I am here to tell you about the muffin. It was big, it had streusel on top, and it had a sweet, cream-cheese-y center. Yow. It was amazing.
Almost as soon as I got home (not as soon, because first I went running. be proud.), I started looking online for a recipe for these babies. I had signed up to bring breakfast in for a ladies’ Bible study, so I figured that was a good enough excuse to make them. 😉 I had it narrowed down to a couple of recipes: either this one from Allrecipes or this one from Annie’s eats. I decided to try the second one – only because the cream cheese filling looked a little more similar to the one I had at Amelie’s.
First, gather all your ingredients.
cream cheese filling:
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
muffins:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 tbsp. plus 1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice {like this homemade version!}
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
4 large eggs
2 cups sugar
2 cups pumpkin puree
1¼ cups vegetable oil
streusel:
½ cup sugar
5 tbsp. flour
1½ tsp. ground cinnamon
4 tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
how to make ’em:
Mix ingredients for cream cheese filling, shape into a log (about 1 1/2″ diameter), wrap in plastic wrap and foil, and freeze for at least 2 hours. (I made mine the day before and let it sit in the freezer overnight. It cut down on steps for the next morning.)
Mix the first 7 ingredients for the muffins together:
In a separate bowl, add eggs, sugar, pumpkin & oil:
Mix well:
Add dry ingredients to wet mixture. Stir, only until both are “incorporated” into each other:
The batter should not look super smooth, but like it does above – mixed, but still slightly lumpy. If you over-mix it, your muffins will be tough.
Fill 24 greased muffin cups with only enough batter to cover the bottom:
Now, take your cream cheese log out of the freezer and unwrap it:
Slice it into 24 equal pieces. Wanna know a trick to keeping them equal? Don’t start at one end and work to the other end. Instead, use a little math and divide the pieces up. First, cut the log in half. Then, cut each of the halves in half (leaving you with 4 equal pieces). Cut the quarter log in half:
Finally, cut each piece in thirds:
Well, looky there! You have 24 (fairly) even pieces of the log! 🙂 Place one cream cheese disc in each muffin cup:
Ooohhhh…lookin’ good!! Now, use the rest of your batter to completely cover the cream cheese discs. Not like this:
But like this:
Now it’s time for your yummy streusel! (actually, I made mine ahead of time and stuck it in the fridge. that way the cream cheese didn’t have time to soften before I stuck ‘er in the oven.) Add all streusel ingredients in a bowl:
And use a fork or pastry cutter to cut the butter into the dry ingredients. This was my least favorite part of these muffins. seriously. My arm started hurting because it’s wimpy. But eventually, my streusel looked good:
and my arm was happy to go back to its wimpy state. Sprinkle streusel on the muffins. Annie says to only use a little, but I went ahead and used all of it. I love streusel. And, hey, I worked hard for that streusel, so you can bet I wasn’t going to throw any of it away.
Wow – it looks good already, right? Stick them in a 350-degree oven for 20-25 minutes. Start with 20 because nothing ruins something like burning does. Ask me how I know…
Halfway into the baking, you’ll start to smell something delicious and you won’t be able to help yourself from turning on the oven light and peering at your beauties. This is what you’ll see:
mmmm…plumping up nicely, I see.
Timer dings.
You run in to see if they’re done.
They’re not.
Stick ’em back in for a few minutes.
Aaaaaaahhhhhhh…perfect:
And one of them is bursting forth with good things:
I decide to eat it since it broke a little on the top. Can’t serve that to the ladies, now, can I? 😉 I wanted to dive right in and eat it as soon as I pulled it out of the oven, but I remembered Annie said to wait a little bit because the cream cheese filling gets pretty hot.
I waited 15 minutes.
Good enough.
I present to you the best muffin I have ever eaten in my entire existence:
Truly, the best way to eat these muffins is about 15 minutes after they come out of the oven. Amazing bliss.
A little spicy…
truly moist…
creamy & warm center…
sweet & crunchy streusel…
out of this world.
I officially urge you to try these when you can. And please don’t wait until they have completely cooled before you eat one. I think they are better warm than cool.
Thanks to Annie for the pounds she has helped me gain due to her marvelous recipe.
One last opportunity to gaze on the beauty:
Happy Baking!!!
For more goodness like this, connect with me on facebook!
Comments
32 responses to “Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins”
Looks AWESOME Christa and I LOVE all of the pictures :). Thank you for sharing!!
yea! thanks! they really ARE awesome. I had 2 this morning, so that proves it. 😉
You are even more of a delight than those muffins! (My girls will make a batch soon just so we can be sure!)
Okay, as soon as I go out and buy some powered sugar I’m going to attempt a gluten free version of this. They look so good! I actually have a gluten free pumpkin muffin recipe that i like, so I’ll add the cream cheese filling and a gf version of the streusel to go on top. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Your pictures look so delicious (minus the photo of your feet; pretty toes though) I wish I could make them right now!
oh yes, you should! I hope it works!
aw 🙂 probably not true, but thanks 😉 I hope you all like them as much as we did!
Ok Christa,
I just wanted to be the only person to NOT comment on the muffins and say, “I AM proud of you for running before baking the muffins!” You are a delight and oh so funny!
Mmm, I want to bite into one of those! What a delicious addition for pumpkin muffins. I have a sweet treat linky party going on at my blog and I’d like to invite you to stop by and link your muffins up. http://sweet-as-sugar-cookies.blogspot.com/2011/02/sweets-for-saturday-6.html
Thanks, Lisa! I’ll have to check that out!
[…] break from the norm this weekend to try out these yummy pumpkin cream cheese that my sister-in-law posted on her blog last […]
Wow! A.ma.zing. I told my “muffin-loving” little girls that I was making new yummy muffins and they eagerly awaited them the whole morning. They joined me in watching the muffins from the oven door too. 🙂 We all enjoyed them. (I’m glad I only made a partial recipe, or I might have enjoyed them a little too much!) They were delicious!!
yea!!! I’m so glad you loved them like I did:)
I thought I left a comment, but it didn’t show up! Anyway, we tried these. They were great and Hana Kate had fun making them. A little sweet for my fat tummy ;), but yum nonetheless! Thanks for posting these!
glad you tried them and liked them!! thanks for letting me know! 🙂
Do you have a food processor, Christa? I do all my “cutting in the butter” with it! Just “pulse” the flour, sugar, butter a few times. Works great for homemade pie crust, biscuits, streusel, etc. Otherwise my arm hurts and I run out of patience.
These are on my list to try!! 🙂
no, I don’t have one! that’s a great idea, though, if I did. For now, I just work out my wimpy arm. 😉
These sound fantastic! I can’t wait to try them !!!
I think I just gained 5 pounds drooling over these – they look AMAZING!!! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
ha, Jamie – better than me! I gained 5 REAL pounds eating them! Cue Jillian Michaels. ;P
REALLY hoping to have an occasion to try these sometime in the not-too-distant future!!! We love muffins! Your recipes are always amazing!
hey, here’s what I do: invite someone over for dessert or brunch. instant excuse to make something you wouldn’t otherwise make. 😉 hehehe I really do that actually. Or else I make it with promises to give half away – sometimes it happens; sometimes I eat them all. 😉
Fantastic! You totally picked the right husband-doesn’t like brownies but still willing to “share”
haha!!! one of the many reasons I {heart} him 🙂
So mine definitely didn’t turn out as pretty, but they are still delicious! I used cream cheese I had in the freezer, and I think that’s part of what messed it up. But like I said, they’re still yummy! 🙂
oh yum!! good for you! I signed up to make some for a ladies’ Bible study on Tuesday. can’t wait… 😛
[…] yes. These are Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins. This is fall & comfort food wrapped up in one tasty little […]
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I made the Pumpkin cream cheese muffins. They were good :). I ammended the recipe a little. Usually I like for the spices in my pumpkin pie to be sutle so I left out the tsps of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. I only used the 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp of pumpkin spice. Also I only used 1 cup of sugar for the muffins and replaced the 1 1/4 cups of vegetable oil with 1 1/4 cups unsalted butter. I mixed the topping too much so it was falling off the muffins after they cooked. The muffins will be going with me to church tomorrow for our annual Thanksgiving dinner.
Thank you for posting this recipe, Christa! They look delicious and I can’t wait to try them!! My cream cheese roll is in the freezer right now!!
mmmm…hope you love it like we do!!!