Pumpkin Cupcake-Muffins

I call this recipe Pumpkin Cupcake-Muffins, because I was trying to create something that was dense and moist like a muffin, but slightly decadent, like a cake. I was making these for a weekend brunch, so I wanted them to be more appropriate for breakfast than for dessert. My vision was to make individual pumpkin treats that had a layer of cream cheese inside, instead of on top, of the muffin.

This is one of those recipes that sounded good in theory, but didn't work out quite the way I had hoped. But in the end, they turned out great after I did some improvisational tweaking.

Martha Stewart has a great recipe for pumpkin cupcakes (minus the cream cheese) on her web site. This is the basic recipe that I used for the cakes.

I started by whisking together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices in a large bowl.

Next, I used an electric hand mixer to beat together the sugar, eggs, and canola oil (I substituted 1/2 cup oil instead of the butter in Martha's recipe, because I wanted these to resemble pumpkin muffins instead of cupcakes). I also added some molasses for flavor. Normally I would've used my stand mixer for this, but I was trying to keep it clean so I could use it to make the cream cheese layer.

This is what the mixture looked like after I mixed everything together. After creaming the eggs, sugar, and oil, I added the pumpkin puree, and then folded in the flour mixture. I forgot to take a photo of this step (sorry)!

Now I had to figure out how to make the cream cheese layer. I ended up using this recipe:

Cream Cheese Layer:

9 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

¼ cup granulated sugar

¼ cup brown sugar

6 TBSP real maple syrup

1 tsp maple extract

1 TBSP all-purpose flour

1 large egg

Beat all ingredients together for 2 minutes until smooth and creamy.

This is what the ingredients looked like before:

And after:In retrospect, I think this mixture needed to be a LOT thicker. Maybe there was too much maple sugar. Maybe I should have creamed the cream cheese, sugar, and eggs together first, so they could have become lighter and fluffier. The mixture tasted good, but the texture was wrong. Nevertheless, I marched onward.

I tried to layer the cupcake/muffins with a layer of pumpkin cake on the bottom, topped with a layer of the cream cheese mixture, and then another layer of pumpkin cake on top. This didn't work out so well, because the cake mixture was MUCH thicker than the cream cheese layer, so it kind of collapsed. See what I mean?I didn't give up though. I decided to go ahead and bake them, and I crossed my fingers that they would turn out well. They actually baked up fine, although the cream cheese mixture completely blended with the pumpkin cake, and they ended up looking like this.They didn't have a defining cream cheese layer, which I thought was necessary for flavor contrast. So, I decided to whip up a pumpkin cream cheese frosting to put on top of the cakes.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Frosting:

6 oz. cream cheese

1/4 cup pumpkin butter (I bought this from Trader Joe's)

1/4 cup confectioner's sugar

Beat all ingredients together on medium speed for 3-4 minutes until light and fluffy.

This frosting was INCREDIBLE, by the way. I love pumpkin and cream cheese. This would make a great cake frosting.

Because of the additional frosting, these ended up resembling cupcakes more than muffins, but they were still delicious!