Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins - Oh Yeah!

photo courtesy of Cookie Madness

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins.

This is starting to turn into a food blog, unintentionally. But with autumn's arrival, it's hard not to post some inspiring and delicious recipes featuring pumpkin. Now, I'm not a big fan of pumpkin pie, but pumpkin bread, muffins, etc....I could eat for days.

I stumbled upon this recipe from Anna on Cookie Madness and I had to post in here. These look delectable and will most likely be my Gettysburg Trip take-along basket. Let me know if you make em and how they turn out!

Marbled Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins

Filling:

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Muffins:

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 ¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon each nutmeg, allspice
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 1/4 cups canned pumpkin (not pie filling)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray top of a muffin tin with cooking spray and line the 12 cups with liners.

Prepare filling. Beat together cream cheese and sugar, then stir in egg and vanilla. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, thoroughly stir together flour, both sugars, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and spices.

In another mixing bowl, blend oil, egg, pumpkin and vanilla. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and stir until combined.

Fill muffin cups about 1/3 of the way full with pumpkin mixture. Spoon cream cheese mixture over pumpkin, dividing evenly between all 12 cups. Spoon a drop of pumpkin batter on top of cream cheese. Pumpkin batter will be thick and will not cover entire top, so the appearance will be similar to a bulls eye.

Bake for 23-25 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack.

Enjoy!