Joyful Abode

Ah, Autumn… my favorite season of all. My favorite colors are usually categorized as autumnal, and I love the flavors of spice cake, pumpkin, and gingerbread. Delicious!

A few weeks ago, I made these pumpkin cream cheese muffins to take to a party. I love the marbled effect of the cream cheese, and they were delicious with a glass of milk.

Recipe adapted from Kraft Food & Family Magazine, Fall 2007. We got it in our mailbox, addressed to someone else “or current resident.” Yay! It has a lot of really good-looking recipes in it, so it was a pleasant piece of “junk” mail.

You will need:

• 1 cup canned pumpkin (not the whole can)
• 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 4 egg whites (3 in one cup, 1 in the other)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 2 cups flour
• 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, softened

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease muffin pans and set aside. (This recipe made a whole pan of mini-muffins plus 6 regular muffins for me.)

Mix pumpkin, 1 cup sugar, brown sugar, 3 egg whites, milk, and oil.

Then stir in flour, baking powder, pie spice, and salt.

In a separate bowl, beat the cream cheese with the last egg white and 2 Tbsp. sugar. This could take a while. I had the husband do it. hehe.

Spoon some pumpkin batter into the bottom of each muffin cup. Then add a small amount of the cream cheese mixture using the two-spoon method (scrape from one spoon with another, then drop). Finish off each muffin with another spoon full of the pumpkin mix.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the muffin comes out clean. I think the small ones took about 25 minutes, and the regular muffins took 30ish.

Remove to a wire rack and cool.

Enjoy warm (you can microwave them if they’re already cooled) with a glass of milk on your porch, in the cool autumn air. Yum!