Get the Recipe: Small Batch Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffin Recipe
These pumpkin cream cheese muffins are soft, moist, and filled with lots of swirls of cream cheese! The recipe is small batch and only makes 6 delicious muffins.
Ingredients
For The Cream Cheese Swirl
- ½ cup (4 ounces or 113 grams) cream cheese, at room temperature,
- 1 large egg, at room temperature,
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup (4 ounces or 113 grams) confectioners' sugar, sifted if necessary
For the Pumpkin Batter
- ⅔ cup (3 ounces or 85 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- pinch ground cloves
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- ¼ cup plus 3 Tablespoons (3 ounces or 85 grams) granulated sugar
- ⅓ cup (2.65 ounces or 75 grams) canned pumpkin puree
- ⅓ cup (2.65 ounces or 75 grams) canola oil
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- Prep the oven and pans. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 400°F. Line every other cavity of a 12-capacity muffin pan with paper liners.
- Make the cream cheese swirl. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese with a wooden spoon or stiff rubber spatula until soft and creamy.Add the egg and vanilla for the cream cheese swirl and mix until just combined. Add the confectioners' sugar, mixing vigorously until smooth and combined, about 1 to 2 minutes.
- Make the pumpkin batter by mixing the dry ingredients for the pumpkin batter. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, cloves, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Whisk the wet ingredients for the pumpkin batter. In another medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, pumpkin, oil, egg, egg yolk, and vanilla.
- Combine the dry and wet ingredients. Gradually mix in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined.
- Assemble the pumpkin muffins. Use a 1-teaspoon measure to fill each lined cavity with 2 teaspoons (.20 ounces or 6 grams) of the cream cheese swirl. Then, use a 1-Tablespoon measure to top the cream cheese with 2 Tablespoons (1 ounce or 28 grams) of pumpkin muffin batter.Repeat once more, topping the pumpkin batter with another 2 teaspoons of cream cheese swirl followed by another 2 Tablespoons of pumpkin muffin batter.Finally, finish each muffin with a final 2 teaspoons of cream cheese swirl. Use a toothpick or wooden skewer to lightly swirl the cream cheese into the muffin batter.
- Bake the muffins. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes, or until the muffins are domed and the skewer inserted into the center of a muffin comes out with a few crumbs attached. Cool in the muffin pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then turn the muffins out onto the rack to cool slightly.
- Serve and store. Serve warm or at room temperature. The muffins can be wrapped individually in plastic wrap or stored in an airtight container or under a cake dome at room temperature for up to 2 days.
Notes
- It’s important that the cream cheese is softened to room temperature. If it’s too cold, it will be too hard to mix the batter for the cream cheese swirl by hand! Cold cream cheese also makes a lumpy batter. To make sure that my cream cheese is softened, I actually like to microwave it on medium-low for 10 to 15 seconds.
- If your cream cheese isn’t softened to the right temperature (see my previous tip about microwaving it to warm it!), it can be hard to mix the batter for the cream cheese swirl. If you’ve already added the egg, do NOT microwave the mixture to soften it more—you’ll end up scrambling the egg. Instead, just use a handheld electric mixer to bring the mixture together.
- The recipe instructs you to line every other cavity with a muffin liner. To do so, align a muffin pan so that its short side faces you. With a standard pan, that means that the muffin pan’s cavities will be in a 3 x 4 grid. Lining every other cavity means that you’ll end up with a pan with liners that look like they’re in hopscotch formation. Why do this? Leaving a cavity empty in between the filled ones allows more air to circulate between them. More hot air enables the muffins to rise to greater heights. You can learn more in this Food52 article (where I’m quoted, too!) about achieving sky-high muffin tops.
- After assembling the muffins, the recipe instructs you to swirl the final dollop of cream cheese into the pumpkin batter. Don’t fully mix the cream cheese so that it disappears into the batter. In fact, you want a fairly the cream cheese to be pretty separate from the pumpkin batter. It makes more dramatic and photogenic muffin tops!
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