Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins with crumble topping

My life definitely changed for the better when I bought my first cans of Libby’s pumpkin pie filling from amazon. One of the first pumpkinny things I made were these deliciously autumnal muffins featuring spices, cream cheese and a crumbly topping. In fact they are SO GOOD that I’ve so far made them twice – once in muffin form, and and the second time in loaf form – which I think was the most delicious.

The one thing that you need to know about this cake is that you need to make the cream cheese filling at least a couple of hours before. This may seem a little inconvenient but trust me, its worth it – trust me I know because I made the muffins without the cream cheese centre and the loaf version with.

Recipe adapted from the wonderful Annie’s Eats. Makes 16 large muffins or one very large loaf cake.

To make the filling, take 230g (just under one packet) of cream cheese and blend with 1 cup icing sugar. Drop onto a large square of clingfilm and shape into a rough log shape, then cover with clingfilm and twist the ends until you have a thick cream cheese sausage. Mmm. Drop it into the freezer for a couple of hours to firm up.

Before you get started with your cake, preheat your oven to 180C/Gas mark 4/350F. To make the pumpkin muffins, combine your dry ingredients

• 3.5 cups plain flour
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• .5 tsp ground cloves
• pinch salt
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 2 cups sugar (you can use most kinds, I prefer golden caster sugar)

in a large bowl, and then take a large jug and mix your wet ingredients

• 4 large eggs
• 2.5 cups pumpkin puree
• 1.5 cups vegetable oil

And mix into a lovely orange fragrant batter.

At this point you’re going to want to make your streusal/crumble topping (or you can make it in advance if you like to be more organised!). It’s pretty simple, and even easier if you can make it in a stand or hand mixer.

• 4 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 10 tbsp plain flour

Mix the butter and flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then stir in the cinnamon and sugar. Set the crumble mix aside.

At this point, remove your cream cheese mix from the freezer. If you’re going with muffins, fill each case about half full with batter and then add a teaspoonful of cream cheese mix into the centre of the batter, and top with more batter. Sprinkle some crumble mix on top of each muffin.

Cook for 20-25 minutes and then let them cool and EAT.

To make the loaf cake version, simply grease a loaf pan, and ladle in half the batter and place in the whole cream cheese sausage, cover with more batter and then the crumble mix on top.

The loaf version takes closer to an hour to bake, and is difficult to see when its done since the cream cheese in the centre will remain gooey. Use your tester to pierce the edge of the cake instead to see if its done.

Sooo good! Enjoy!

x Kerry