Cream Cheese Filled Pumpkin Muffins

This weekend I had a hankering for some pumpkin cheesecake muffins, so I set out to make the perfect fall treat. My high expectations for the first recipe were sadly not met. However, I knew this idea had a ton of potential, so I found a promising new muffin recipe, combined it with my all-time favorite streusel, and crossed my fingers. Some fall magic happened, and I could barely stop myself from eating a second muffin after the first!

The muffins are fairly moist, well spiced, sweet on top, and have a little tang from the cream cheese to balance it out. The tang from the cream cheese plus the sweetness from the cinnamon honey butter are especially good together.

And now excuse me while I nibble a warm muffin and enjoy the first snow of the year.

Cream Cheese Filled Pumpkin Muffins with Cinnamon Honey Butter

Muffins
12 Tbs (3/4 cup) salted butter, melted
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs, room temperature
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup milk
2 1/2 cups flour (can replace a little bit with whole wheat flour)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or 1/4 tsp cloves, 1/2 tsp allspice, 1/4 tsp nutmeg)
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Streusel
1/3 cup flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
4 Tbs cold salted butter, cubed
4 oz cream cheese, cut into 16 cubes*

Cinnamon Honey Butter
4 Tbs salted butter, at room temperature
2 Tbs honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line muffin tins with 16-20 paper liners.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the butter, brown sugar, and vanilla. Add the eggs, and mix. Add pumpkin and milk; beat until smooth and creamy. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Mix until just combined; do not over-mix.
3. Make the streusel. Combine the flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Add the butter and crumble with your fingers.
4. Divide the batter among the prepared tins. Push 1 cube of cream cheese into each muffin. Sprinkle on the streusel, pressing into the tops of the muffins a little bit. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
5. Make the cinnamon butter. In a small bowl, combine the butter, honey, and cinnamon.
6. Serve smeared with cinnamon butter.

*Cream cheese can be doubled if you like a lot of cream cheese. If you want more of a cheesecake filling, mix together 6 oz room temp cream cheese, 1 egg yolk, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 3 Tbs sugar. I would recommend sticking to the plain cream cheese if you do the cinnamon honey butter, otherwise it will be overwhelmingly sweet.

Muffin and butter recipe from: https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/pumpkin-coffee-cake-muffins/

Pumpkin Muffins

How was your Christmas?

Ours was wonderful. I'm in Taiwan with my family, but we took a week before Christmas to vacation in Vietnam. It was amazing! We tried a lot of ethnic food, which did some pretty sketchy things to our stomachs--fried corn, pho, fish stir fry at a restaurant which Obama ate at, and more seafood than I've ever eaten in my life. We're ok though, so no regrets. We spent a few days on a boat cruising through Ha Long Bay, one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The rocky islands rising out of the mist are surreal.

We came back to Taiwan on the 24th and three minutes after we stepped foot in the apartment, my mom and I were in the kitchen, making breadsticks, zuppa toscana, and peppermint ice cream for our Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas Day was filled with monkey bread, cookies, steak, wrapping paper, and Christmas music.

Now it's Boxing Day, as they say in New Zealand. A day to relax, enjoy the new presents, and do a little more baking. Pumpkin muffins are an easy and tasty treat if you're looking for something to make today, like me. They're tender, not too crumbly, and just a little bit sweet. I love the seeds and the crumble because it gives them more yummy flavor and texture. The raisins too, except that we usually leave them out because SOME PEOPLE who shall not be named do not like them. *Ahem* But we devour these muffins at every opportunity--breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, snack, dessert, midnight snack... They're healthy enough that it's justified. Right?

This is a recipe that is always in our fall-winter recipe rotation. They're just so warm and comforting! I actually took these pictures a few years ago and have been meaning to share the recipe with you ever since, but that's neither here nor there. So, you'd better make up for lost time and get baking! Merry Christmas!

Pumpkin Crumble Muffins
Makes: 18 regular muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/8 tsp. ground allspice
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup canned pure pumpkin
1/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk*
2 large eggs
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup raisins
3 Tbs. raw green (hulled) pumpkin seeds (pepitas), divided

Crumble Topping, optional:
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 Tbs. butter, softened

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400ºF with rack in the middle. Butter muffin pan or use muffin papers.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt.
3. In a medium bowl, combine butter, brown sugar, pumpkin, buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla. Add to dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Do not overmix.
4. Gently stir in raisins and 2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds.
5. Evenly divide batter among prepared muffin cups and sprinkle with remaining pepitas.
6. Make crumble topping: Combine ingredients in small bowl. Cut butter in until crumbly. Sprinkle onto tops of muffins.
7. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool in muffin tin for 5 minutes, then remove from muffin tin and cool on a wire rack.

*To make 1 cup of buttermilk substitute: 1 Tbs. vinegar or lemon juice + just enough milk to make 1 cup. Let sit for five minutes before using.

Chocolate Chip Muffins

Not gonna lie, I'm always a little suspicious of muffin recipes. Is the 'muffin' they advertise really just a cupcake disguised as a muffin? I mean, nothing against cupcakes, but if I wanted a cupcake, I would make one. And if it does turn out to be a muffin, is a bakery style muffin? As in one with a big, crusty top, thick, moist, not too sweet, and with add-ins or streusel? Because that's my kind of muffin – a real muffin.

But I am proud to announce that these muffins are muffins...even though the original pictures looked a little cupcake-y for my tastes. And I probably shouldn't be saying that because my pictures look a little cupcake-y. But in my defense, it was the cupcake liners' fault!

This week I decided that I needed to make something with these cute cupcake papers ASAP because I got them in IKEA a few months back. I know, that's a long time ago, but I forgot.

My choices to make with the papers were: cupcakes or muffins. Now, I couldn't make cupcakes because I was just in the process of decorating cupcakes for an order (and there were extras for us), so it had to be muffins. Plus it was breakfast time when I went through all this.

But you see, this is where the problem with the muffin tops comes in. These papers are not normal – they are a different shape (narrow but tall), which is why I wanted to test them.

Turns out the papers work great! They peel away sooo nicely from the muffins (although, that could be another good quality on the muffins' part...I hate it when I have to nibble the papers like a dog to get the half of my muffin that is stuck there).

So since the papers were narrower and taller than normal, they didn't fit in the pan quite right...and the batter just kept pushing the cupcake paper sides out...and out...and out...until I ran out of batter but the papers weren't filled to the tops. I could see that the muffins would have had big, beautiful muffin tops had I just made less muffins and filled the papers higher, but it was too late. My only reconciliation was that the tops were still sparkly...I sprinkled some vanilla sugar from Sweden on the tops. Yum!

So you see? These muffins are true muffins if you fill the papers to the tops. And when you eat the muffins, you will discover that they are delicious...not very crumbly, and still moist with the perfect amount of chocolate chips. They are not cupcakes – and I should know because I had one for lunch. They are substantial, sort of like waffles. I should know that too because I had one for dinner. It's summer right?

In case you're wondering about the funny way the muffins bake, baking these at a very high temperature first then lowering it makes the muffins dome nicely. Also, the ginormous amount of baking powder keeps the muffins fluffy, and using buttermilk makes them moist. This muffin batter comes together really fast – but don't try to go too fast and use an electric mixer. Muffin batter is delicate and an electric mixer will produce rock hard muffins.

Chocolate Chip Muffins

Makes: 6 jumbo, 15 standard, or 30 mini muffins (baking times differ)

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour (do not overmeasure)

4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

2 eggs, room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup buttermilk* 

1/2 cup canola oil (or vegetable oil/melted coconut oil)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups chocolate chips (semi-sweet chocolate, chocolate chunks, dark chocolate, or milk chocolate)

coarse sugar for sprinkling (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425ºF degrees. Line muffin tins with cupcake papers or spray with non-stick spray.

2. In a large bowl, use a spatula to mix flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg until combined. Set aside.

3. Mix eggs and sugar together in a medium bowl. Add milk, oil, and vanilla and mix until combined into a pale yellow batter.

4. Using a wooden spoon, fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients, being careful not to over-mix. Be sure to scrape dry ingredients from bottom of bowl and mix until no pockets of flour remain – the batter will be thick and lumpy.

5. Fold in chocolate chips.

6. Fill muffin cups all the way. Sprinkle sugar on top if desired.

7. For jumbo muffins: Bake at 425ºF degrees for 5 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375ºF and bake for 25-26 minutes more, until lightly golden and the tops are set.

For standard muffins: Bake at 425ºF degrees for 5 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375ºF and bake for 13-14 minutes more, until lightly golden and the tops are set.

For mini muffins: Bake at 375ºF degrees for 11-12 minutes, until lightly golden and the tops are set.

8. Cool in pans for 10 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Eat with butter, jam, or peanut butter. Muffins taste best the same day. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days. Freeze for up to 3 months.

*Buttermilk produces the moistest texture. For easy homemade buttermilk: 1 cup milk + 1 Tbs. vinegar OR lemon juice. Let sit for 5 minutes before using.

Recipe from: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2013/01/17/bakery-style-chocolate-chip-muffins/

Chocolate Muffins

Tuesday morning I woke up and made 36 chocolate cupcakes for a cupcake order. I stacked them in a giant pile, planning to decorate them in the afternoon when they were cool.

Off I went with my friend to tour a few Russian monasteries. After stumbling into the Russian Water Museum with a babushka insisting we see the whole thing, visiting a monastery with two babushkas that were head scarf critics, relaxing in the pretty gardens of the second monastery, and eating a delicious Russian lunch while it rained outside, I retuned home to decorate my cupcakes.

Mom set out the cupcakes in a line on the counter.

"There's one missing," Mom informed me.

"What? Count them again." This was not a new problem. It's easy to miscount cupcakes.

But alas, it was true – one chocolate cupcake was missing.

No one admitted to eating it. The only person we hadn't questioned was Damon, who was at work.

When Damon returned, I interrogated him.

"So, was that a good cupcake at lunch?"

Damon's eyes bulged. "You counted them?!"

"Yep, and we're missing one."

"Well, I saw them there, and I hoped that it was a chocolate muffin. You know, like one of the ones  at bakeries with little chocolate chips in them."

"No. These are for an order, and there are no extra cupcakes in the freezer. Now you must come with me to tell the people and give them a discount."

After embarrassing Damon and offering the customers a discount, the next day I decided I could make actual chocolate muffins for Damon.

I was pleased with the high domes of the muffins rather than the flat tops of the chocolate cupcakes. Everyone ended up happy!

Chocolate Muffins

Makes: 14 standard sized muffins

Recipe from: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/moist-chocolate-muffins/

Glazed Streusel Coffee Muffins

Yesterday we went to the old circus here in Russia. We had so much fun! I loved the sea lions...they all had little personalities, clapping their flippers, bobbing their heads, doing tricks (or refusing to do them)...basically, begging for treats! They were so funny!

Anyways...I just had to share that. Now onto the muffins!

These muffins are perfectly moist when they're just a little bit warm from the oven—and then there's the bonus of the warmth bringing out the coffee flavor. That said, do not hesitate to gobble these down as soon as they cool down enough so as not to burn your tongue.

And there are also so many other layers of flavors, too—spices, maple syrup...and chocolate, if you're like me! I went all out with the streusel and glaze, and then took a step farther with the chocolate chips. Let's just say these weren't the healthiest muffins ever!

While these take a little time to make, the end result is worth it.

Streusel Coffee Muffins with Maple Glaze

Makes 12-13

Ingredients:

Streusel:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup tightly packed light brown sugar

1/2 tsp. ground allspice

5 Tbsp. butter (cold and cut into bits)

Muffins:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup sugar

1 Tbsp. espresso powder

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp. sea salt

1/3 cup tightly packed light brown sugar

1 cup strong brewed coffee (cooled)

8 Tbsp. (1 stick or 1/2 cup) melted butter (cooled)

1 egg

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Maple Glaze

3/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted

about 6-8 Tbsp. pure maple syrup

Directions:

Streusel:

1. Whisk the flour, brown sugar, and allspice in a small bowl until blended.

2. Add the bits of cold butter and toss to coat, then use your fingers to work the butter into the dry ingredients until you've got irregularly shaped crumbs.

3. Cover and refrigerate while you make the muffins.

Muffins:

1. Preheat the oven to 400F. Butter, spray, or line 12 molds of a regular sized muffin pan. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl whisk together the flour, sugar, espresso powder, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

3. Stir in the brown sugar, making certain that there are no lumps.

4. In another bowl, whisk the coffee, melted butter, egg, and vanilla extract together until well combined.

5. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. The batter may be lumpy; do not over-mix.

6. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

7. Remove the streusel from the refrigerator. Sprinkle it over each muffin, then use your fingers to gently press the crumbs into the batter.

8. Bake 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean.

9. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from it's mold. Remove muffins and cool completely on racks.

10. Add glaze if desired.

Glaze:

1. In a medium bowl combine the sifted powdered sugar and maple syrup.

2. Mix, adding more maple syrup if needed, to achieve a smooth, sticky glaze. Drizzle over the cooled muffins with a whisk or fork.

Recipe from: http://www.unegaminedanslacuisine.com/2009/12/streuseled-coffee-muffins-with-maple.html

Recipe adapted from: Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Mocha Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

I have to say, this is one of the best banana-foods ever. Everyone who tries them falls in love. Instantly. Especially when they just came from the oven. These muffins are just that yummy. Not to mention they can be eaten for breakfast or as a snack, so I can eat them twice as much!

I actually put off making these, and left them to my mom for awhile, because I don't know how to make espresso. I know, pretty sad. And I still haven't learned how to make espresso. But don't let espresso stop you from making them!

Mocha Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 egg

3-4 ripe bananas

1 Tbs. espresso

1 tsp. vanilla

2 1/4 cups flour

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 cups chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Blend butter, sugar, egg, banana, espresso & vanilla.

2. Add flour salt, baking powder & soda. Blend just until flour disappears. Add chocolate chips.

3. Spoon into paper lined muffin cups 2/3 - 3/4 full.

4. Bake 350°F for 25 min.

5. Cool on racks.