Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

Today was the Grandparents' Day Fall Party at my daughter's school and I signed up to bring baked goods. I've made this recipe once or twice before and it's a yummy, fall treat. I'm giving you my amended recipe, where the batter is 1 1/2 times the original recipe. Even following this today, I was too generous with the batter on the first dozen muffins and found myself scraping the bowl for every last tidbit of batter to finish off the second dozen decently.

Pumpkin and Cream Cheese Muffins

adjusted from a Country Living (Sept. 2004) recipe

Ingredients:

8 oz. cream cheese (softened)

4 eggs

3 ½ cups sugar

3 ½ cups flour

¼ cup pecans (roughly chopped)

3 TBSP butter (melted)

3 tsp. cinnamon

¼ tsp. salt

2 ¼ tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. baking soda

1 15 oz. can pure pumpkin

1/3 + 1/6 cup vegetable oil

¾ tsp. vanilla

Directions:

Heat oven to 375. Lightly coat 2 – 12 cup muffin tins with oil (or line with muffin liners). Mix the cream cheese, 1 egg, and 3 TBSP. sugar in a small bowl; set aside. Toss 5 TBSP. sugar, ½ cup flour, pecans, butter and ½ tsp. cinnamon together in a medium bowl; set aside. Combine the remaining 3 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, 3 tsp. cinnamon, salt, baking soda and baking powder in a large bowl. Lightly beat 3 eggs, pumpkin, oil and vanilla together in a medium bowl. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture, pour the pumpkin mixture in and mix with a fork until moistened. Evenly divide batter in half. Fill muffin cups with about 2 TBSP. batter. Place about 2 tsp. of cream cheese fillling in center of each cup and fill with remaining batter. Sprinkle some of pecan mixture on top and bake until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean; about 20-25 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Makes 2 dozen muffins.