These!
That right there are pumpkin and cream cheese muffins. I just ate one and can, without hesitation, say I think they are quite yummy.
I’ve been doing ok with my October challenge, though people-who-shall-remain-nameless started requesting things less sweet in an effort to not eat an entire cake with her sister in 2 days. Which means I made some pumpkin bread, some pumpkin pancakes, even a “pumpkin” chai (that one was a bit of a stretch, I admit…). I figured I could push the less sweet thing with a muffin, though. Hey, there’s no icing at least.
In an effort to improve my recipe blogging abilities, I need practice. So – here we go! Here are the ingredients sitting on my mom’s pretty counter.
Pictured would be (you might notice I hadn’t measured yet. If you didn’t notice, awesome. My recipe blogging is totally helping):
1 ½ cups of flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 heaping tsp cinnamon (…heaping is fun to say…)
½ heaping tsp nutmeg (…still fun to say…)
½ heaping tsp ground cloves (…starting to sound odd now…)
½ tsp salt
2 eggs
1 ¼ cup sugar (separate 1 cup out for the muffins, and ¼ cup out for cream cheese goodness)
1 cup pumpkin puree
¾ cup vegetable oil
4 ounces cream cheese (I used fat free because I’m healthy like that)
1 cupcake pan, pretty pink cupcake papers optional
Begin by turning on your oven to 400°F. Again, baked goods, baking…turning on the oven helps.
Up next, put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Notice the pretty spices and their artistic array…
Now mix them together (did I mention this wasn’t a hard recipe?). Here’s another helpful photo for you, so you know what to do.
In a different bowl, mix the eggs, pumpkin puree and oil. This is not a yummy looking photo since I began to mix before I remembered to take a photo, but I am a dedicated blogger, so I’m showing you. And I took the picture, so look at it please. Don’t judge it, but look at it. I made it small, so you really can just glance and keep going.
After those wet ingredients are mixed up, add in the sugar. Again, a helpful photo.
Now get crazy. Introduce the pumpkin mix to the flour mix.
After they meet, pour the pumpkin on the flour. There is a lot of pumpkin, so the flour sort of floats around as islands in the pumpkin ocean. See?
Its cool though, don’t worry that the pumpkin ocean seems large. Mix it up. This happens when you do, a normal muffin batter. Hmmm, spices.
Muffin batter – check; its now time to make the cream cheese portion of these delectable treats. Its super easy – mix the cream cheese and the sugar. To add a little drama to this simple task, here’s my Hitchcock inspired interpretation.
The mixer is scary looking, no?
Moving on…
Throw the cream cheese mix into a pastry bag. I couldn’t decide if I wanted the cream cheese to be on top of the muffins or as a surprise in the middle. So I did half and half. Still can’t decide which I prefer, so I’ll keep eating all the muffins as research, but until then, do what you please. Which means either filling the muffin tins ⅔’s full and piping the cream cheese on top, or filling the tins half full, piping the cream cheese and then covering with some more batter. Here’s a visual aid for those who don’t understand when I ramble. The ones in the back have the hidden cream cheese, so you can’t see the cream cheese. Again, I’m helpful.
Pop these babies into the oven and wait.
15 minutes on the timer and its on. Bake on, little muffins, bake on.
When the extremely long feeling 15 minutes are over, take them out of the oven. They should be cooked, but since they have cream cheese mix in there, you can’t do the toothpick trick. I suggest testing the top of the muffin by pushing it. It should be stubborn and pop back up if done. If its not done, it will be wussy and stay down. Bake it longer then.
Here’s what they look like as they mock you by being too hot to eat.
Let them cool a bit in the pan, then take them out to finish cooling on a rack, much like this. Now I know you what taking a muffin out of a muffin tin and placing them on a rack looks like. But look how pretty and orange and white they are! They needed their own picture. Be thankful I haven’t included all the other pictures of these muffins I took, though I thought they were pretty too…
Just look at this muffin…yum. SO, now you’re done! Eat one and celebrate!
Let me know if you think cream cheese on top is better or in the middle is better…I’m still eating to figure it out…
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