These muffins have a super moist crumb (quite tender) and cream cheese swirl and are the perfect way to start your day. Try my Pumpkin Sweet Rolls for another delicious pumpkin treat.
Where Do I Find Pumpkin Spice?
This Pumpkin Cream Cheese Swirl Muffins recipe includes my homemade Pumpkin Spice. You can find this in most grocery stores as well as online.
Homemade spice blends can be stronger than spices bought in the store, so you may want to start with less than the amount the recipe calls for when using homemade spice blends.
How Full Should the Muffin Tin Be?
As you can see from my pictures, I filled up my muffin tin to the top with pumpkin batter. And then added the cream cheese in and swirled! If you want a tall muffin, one that has that coveted “muffin top” be sure to fill your liners to the top.
I opted to not use muffin liners, but you certainly can!
Can I Make Mini Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins?
Sure! They will bake at 350°F for 12-14 minutes. This recipe yields 12 big muffins, so you will have a lot more mini muffins.
Pumpkin Puree vs. Pumpkin Pie Filling
Pumpkin puree is cooked pumpkin that is blended or mashed into a smooth texture. There should be no seasoning, spice, flavoring, or sugar added.
Pumpkin Pie Filling has spices and flavoring already added and is sweeter.
How to Store & Freeze Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins
There are a few ways to properly store muffins.
- Room Temperature: Because they are best enjoyed at room temperature, this is usually the recommended way to storing. However, these are only good at room temperature on the day you make them. After that, they should be refrigerated.
- Refrigerator: These muffins have cream cheese in them so do need to be refrigerated. (Refrigeration, in general, dries out baked goods faster so a classic muffin recipe shouldn’t be refrigerated.) Place in a sealable plastic bag or airtight container and then place into the refrigerator. They should keep for up to 5 days. To reheat, remove from refrigerator pop into the microwave for 10 seconds or just allow muffin to come to room temperature naturally, about 15 minutes.
- Freezer: Place cooled muffins into a freezer-safe sealable plastic bag or a freezer-safe airtight container and pack as closely as possible without crushing. Remove as much air as possible. Label with date and recipe name.
How to Reheat Frozen Muffins
Remove muffin from the freezer and allow to come to room temperature overnight in the refrigerator or on the counter for a couple of hours.
More Muffin Recipes
Pumpkin Cream Cheese Swirl Muffins
Ingredients
Muffin
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- ½ cup (109 g) vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 can (15 ounces) pure pumpkin
- 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
- ⅓ cup (67 g) light brown sugar, packed
- 1¾ cups (219 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon homemade pumpkin spice, (2 tablespoons if store-bought spice)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
Cream Cheese Swirl
- 1 block (8 ounces) cream cheese
- ½ cup (100 g) confectioners sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°F. Spray a standard 12-cup muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray.
- In a large bowl, beat in eggs, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, pumpkin, brown sugar, and granulated sugar.
- Add in flour, pumpkin spice, baking soda, and salt. Stir with a spatula until combined.
- In a medium bowl using a hand mixer on medium speed, beat cream cheese until smooth. Add in confectioners sugar and beat until well combined.
- Fill each of the muffin cups to the top with the batter.
- Top each muffin with about 1 tablespoon of cream cheese mixture and use a toothpick to swirl it into the batter. Try to get the cream cheese down into the batter a bit, but leave some of that gorgeous swirl for the top.
- Bake muffins for 18-20 minutes. Muffins are done when an inserted toothpick is removed with a few crumbs, but not wet batter.
Did you make this recipe?
Thank you for making my recipe! You took pictures, right? Well go ahead and post them on Instagram! Be sure to mention me @iambaker and use the hashtag #YouAreBaker.
I really like how you have the recipe next to the instructions. Great recipe, my family really enjoyed it.
Thank you for the recipe! These were very good. I substituted sweet potato for pumpkin.
I just love love love this recipe! Goodness gracious they were scrumdiddlyumptious!
No carb count in the nutrition info. How many carbs?
The carb count is probably pretty high, when you take into account the flour, the granulated sugar, brown sugar, and confectioner’s sugar. Just that alone would be a high carb count. If you’re looking for low carb version of it, it might be fun to experiment with subbing out some of the ingredients. I might just try that myself! 🙂
So good! I cut the granulated sugar and brown sugar in half and they were still amazing.
I made these, family loved them.
My family LOVES these! Tifay I made them without cupcake liners and they turned our waaaaay better and prettier! YUMMY 😋
Does anyone have high altitude instructions.?
Thanks
Katherine
https://iambaker.net/high-altitude-baking-tips/
I made these today (11/17/22) with fresh pumpkin puree. I’m guessing that’s the reason I had more batter than needed for 12 muffins 🙂 No biggie, I made a layered mini loaf since there was extra cream cheese too. The swirling didn’t work for me too much; I made sure it was pushed in the batter. I used paper liners since my “non” stick is fairly old. Lovely muffin! Sure my co-workers will approve tomorrow. Just some observances: The recipe doesn’t state (but it is above in the information) on how much to fill the cups (maybe step #4) and storage requirements. I think that would be a good add to the recipe.
Great catch, thank you Gail!
A piece of heaven. I’ve never baked with cream cheese before and this was a nice recipe to break me into my comfort levels. Sharing with friends tomorrow after our taste test. 💜