Seasonal pumpkin cream cheese muffins flavored with real pumpkin and pumpkin spice, filled with a cheesecake surprise and topped off with a brown sugar streusel! Save this one for Fall!
I hope your Labor Day weekend was filled with lots of good times, great food, and good company. Zach and I spent time with family, went kayaking, and hosted an impromptu game night with my siblings that may have included one of the most cutthroat games of Pictionary yet 😳
Much of the weekend was beautiful, but Saturday was cold and rainy and definitely felt a lot like Fall weather. While I know that Labor Day doesn’t officially mark the end of Summer and I’m definitely not trying to rush away the warm weather… Fall baking is my absolute favorite kind of baking and I have been dying to share this Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffin recipe with you.
It took every ounce of self-restraint to keep from sharing this recipe before today, and even if you aren’t ready to dive into the pumpkin spice just yet, print this recipe and save it for after the 22nd.
I’ve been stockpiling pumpkin since July and am currently trying to figure out my calendar so that I’m not bombarding you with a pumpkin recipe each day of the week (we’ll see how that goes), but today let’s dig in to these pumpkin cream cheese muffins!
This muffin recipe is loosely based off of my beloved pumpkin cupcakes (the cupcakes that transformed me from someone who was meh about pumpkin to someone who has spent the last three months thinking of nothing but different ways to add sugar to pumpkin and get it into my mouth) and is also the base of my popular (cream cheese-less) pumpkin muffins.
The very best part is what’s inside — a sweet cheesecake-inspired surprise that you wouldn’t suspect from the outside.
Because the cream cheese/cheesecake layer doesn’t cook up in the same way that the actual muffin does, these muffins have a tendency to deflate a bit after baking. That’s not really a problem (unless you are some sort of muffin-top purists), but I do take a few measures to prevent this by making sure that I add enough muffin batter over the top of the cream cheese filling to cover it entirely, and then use a spoon to make sure the edges around the cream cheese are filled in as well.
The streusel topping also doesn’t exactly help our muffin tops here, as the weight of it tends to weigh them down a bit.
I also like a lot of streusel on my muffins, so much that my beloved apple crumble muffins usually get complaints because the recipe makes so much streusel — but I use every bit of it!
To appease those of you who are less streusel friendly, I cut the recipe in half for these pumpkin cream cheese muffins, but if you’re a streusel fiend like me… you know what to do.
Zach’s sister suggested that these muffins would taste even better topped off with some powdered sugar (like a pumpkin roll), so of course that went on as well.
Enjoy!
And I wasn’t going to announce this because I’m a little nervous about it, but I plan on making these live for my first Facebook Live around 12:00 EST on Thursday, so if you happen to be scrolling through your feed at that time, please don’t hesitate to drop by and say Hi!
I’ll be trying my hardest not to screw anything up too badly, but even if I do at least there will be pumpkin cream cheese muffins at the end of it all.
Wish me luck!
Cream Cheese Pumpkin Muffins
Ingredients
Streusel
- 3 Tablespoons butter melted
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour (63g)
- 1/3 cup brown sugar tightly packed (75g)
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Cream Cheese Filling
- 8 ounces cream cheese softened to room temperature (225g)
- 1/3 cup sugar (65g)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pumpkin Muffins
- 3/4 cup butter softened (165g)
- 1/2 cup sugar (100g)
- 1/4 cup brown sugar packed (50g)
- 2 large eggs lightly beaten (room temperature preferred)
- 1 cup pumpkin puree 225g
- 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 Tablespoons milk (30ml)
- 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour (150g)
- 2 teaspoons pumpkin spice
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
!Streusel
- Prepare the crumble first by whisking together flour, sugars and cinnamon.
- Pour the melted butter into the mixture and, using a fork, stir until crumbles form. Set aside.
!Cream Cheese Filling
- In a medium-sized bowl, combine cream cheese, granulated sugar and vanilla
- Stir until smooth. Set aside.
Muffins
- Preheat oven to 425F (215C) and line a 12 count muffin tin with paper liners.
- In a medium-sized bowl, use an electric mixer to cream together softened butter and sugars until well-creamed.
- Add eggs, one at a time, beating until combined.
- Stir in pumpkin puree and vanilla extract until well combined.
- Add milk and stir. Be sure to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure that all ingredients are well combined.
- In a separate, medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, pumpkin spice, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Using a spatula, gradually add dry ingredients and wet and stir until just combined -- do not over-mix!
- Portion about 2 tablespoons of pumpkin muffin batter into the bottom of each muffin liner.
- Drop a heaping tablespoon of cream cheese filling over the pumpkin batter, and then drop more pumpkin muffin batter overtop, taking care to completely cover the cream cheese and filling 3/4 of the way full.
- Top with prepared streusel and transfer to oven.
- Bake on 425F (215C) for 8 minutes and then reduce the oven temperature to 350 (175C) (do not open the oven door or remove the muffins, just leave them in and reduce the temperature and bake another 12-15 minutes, or until tops are beginning to turn golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with dry pumpkin muffin crumbs.
- Allow to cool and then sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired and enjoy.
Nutrition
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Janette says
I am SO happy for pumpkin recipes and these muffins look delicious. Thank you for sharing!!
Bri says
Literally the best muffins that I ever made, thank you for sharing this recipe!!!
Sues says
These look seriously perfect!! I’m definitely halfway between summer and fall right now. I don’t want summer to go, but am still diving into pumpkin and other fall fun. This time of year makes me so happy!
Shawnna Griffin says
hey girl- these muffins look so yummy!