Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins (Like Starbucks)

Grooved Pavement's Note:

These delicious muffins are very close to the kind you can get at Starbucks. If you want to cut back on the fat, substitute some or all of the oil with natural unsweetened applesauce.

• Total Time: 50 mins
• Prep Time: 20 mins
• Cook Time: 30 mins

Ingredients:

Serves: 24

Yield: 24.0 muffins

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 1 pinch cardamom (optional)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups pumpkin
• 1 ¼ cups vegetable oil
• 8 ounces cream cheese
• choppedpumpkin seeds (optional) or walnuts (optional) or pecans (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Put the entire brick of cream cheese on a piece of wax paper or parchment paper and shape it into a long log.
3. Put it in the freezer while you mix and fill the pans, up to an hour.
4. Unwrap and cut with a sharp knife so each cream cheese disk equals 1-2 teaspoons. If the cream cheese disks are too big around, cut thick slices and then cut them in half. This lets you push it down into the batter easier.
5. Mix all ingredients together (except cream cheese and nuts).
6. Fill muffin tins (greased or paper cups) half full.
7. Put cream cheese disc in the middle, pressing down.
8. Sprinkle with 1 tsp chopped nuts.
9. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean from the muffin part (do not touch the cream cheese!).
10. Let cool in pans for 5 minutes, then remove to racks to cool completely. Do not touch the cream cheese until it cools.

Reviews

[Home-ArtStudios]

I've made this recipe three times, and everyone goes crazy for them. However, after sampling Starbucks version again, I felt that this recipe seemed pale, and lacked the richness and spicy, peppery bite which made this muffin so appealing to me in the first place.

So, the last time I made them I added an additional teaspoon of cinnamon and nutmeg, a teaspoon of ginger, an additional 1/2 teaspoon of cloves, 1/8 teaspoon of cardamom, 2 tablespoons of chocolate powder, and 1/4 cup of dark molasses, as well as the sugar and vanilla addition to the cream cheese.

WOW! The additions made the muffins extremely rich and spicy, and closer to the original than I had imagined.

[michelliokristen]

Glad I read some of the other reviews first.. these muffins were DELICIOUS, but I did have to make a few changes. I mostly followed the other review that said to add cocoa powder, molasses, and more spices. But since I could only find pumpkin pie filling, and not just plain pumpkin.. I only added half the amount of spices (1/2 tsp. instead of tsp. for all the spices that were already in the pumpkin pie filling), but also added the tsp. of ginger, 1/2 tsp. of allspice, 2 Tbs. molasses, and 2 Tbs. cocoa powder. For the cream cheese filling, I added 2 Tbs. of powdered sugar, 1 Tbs. of light brown sugar, and 1/4 tsp. of vanilla. The filling was PERFECT and tasted EXACTLY like a delicious danish/cheese cake. After all of the above changes, this recipe yielded about FORTY muffins (regular size muffin pan, not oversized). I would recommend doubling the cream cheese mixture though (or just halfing the batter mixture), because I ran out about half way through, and started using other toppings/fillings for the remaining muffins (chocolate chips, brown sugar topping, etc).

[stacybanana]

This is an excellent recipe! I did a few things to cut calories and they still turned out amazing. With my substitutions, each muffin turned out to be 158 calories, 3g of fat and 26 carbs.

Substitute the oil with unsweetened applesauce.
Use 1/4 of pecans as topping.
Use low fat cream cheese instead of regular.
Use Splenda instead of sugar.

They still turn out to be very moist and delicious! HUGE hit at Thanksgiving!

ps. I also tried this recipe with banana - replace the 2 cups of pumpkin with 2 cups of mashed banana, and replace the 4 tsp of pumpkin spice with 3 tsp of allspice and 1 extra tsp of nutmeg. DELICIOUS!