whole wheat pumpkin cream cheese muffins

i love muffins

but not the kind that is basically a cupcake without (or sometimes with!) icing

i like a hearty muffin

something i can grab on a busy no-time-to-eat-until-these-kiddos-nap kind of morning

or a guess-its-a-no-nap kind of afternoon

i also love fall produce 

all the squash, apples, pomegranates, persimmons, brussel sprouts, etc, etc, etc

  and pumpkin...i adore pumpkin!

roasted baby pumpkin

pumpkin bread

pumpkin pie

pumpkin spice latte

you really can't go wrong with the stuff!

so it's no surprise that i found myself craving pumpkin spice muffins the other day

i turned to google, found a good looking recipe, tweaked it to suit what i had around the house

and vwalla! 

these guys are not-too-sweet and a good nutritious snack  

the only thing i might do differently, is maybe make a smidge more cream cheese filling

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

(borrowed and adapted from this recipe)

makes 12 large muffins

Ingredients:

- 3 oz light cream cheese, at room temperature

- 1 Tbsp sugar

- 1/2 tsp ground pumpkin pie spice

- canola oil cooking spray

- 2 cups white whole wheat flour

- 1 tsp baking soda

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 1 tsp ground cinnamon

- 1/2 tsp ground ginger

- 1/4 tsp ground cloves

- 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar

- 2 Tbsp unsulfured molasses

- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

- 2 large eggs, lightly whisked

- 1 cup pumpkin puree

- 1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract

- 1/4 cup 2% milk

- 1/2 cup nonfat greek yogurt

- raw, unsalted pepitas (pumpkin seeds) or sunflower seeds

Directions:

- Preheat oven to 350* F. 

- Lightly coat a 12-cup muffin tin with the cooking spray or line with paper cups.

- In a small bowl, combine the cream cheese, sugar and pumpkin pie spice until well mixed and set aside.

- In a medium bowl, mix the dry ingredients (flour through nutmeg).

- In a large bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, molasses, olive oil and eggs until combined then add the pumpkin, vanilla and buttermilk.

- Add dry ingredients into wet and stir just until fully moistened.

- Spoon the batter into your muffin tin, filling each cup a little less than half way then add about 1 tsp of the cream cheese mixture into the center of each cup. Top with remaining batter. 

 - Sprinkle each muffin with a few pepitas.

- Bake for 20-23 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean (a bit of cream cheese clinging to the toothpick is fine, but there shouldn’t be any raw batter).

- Let the muffins cool in the muffin tin for 5 minutes then transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling.

enjoy!