No one should have to choose between raspberry cheesecake and a fresh muffin. I made it my mission to combine these two wonderful baked goods.

I’ve been wanting to make this recipe for a while. Unlike my other recipes, thus far, this isn’t a family recipe or even a NEPA regional recipe, it’s simply my own creation. The idea for a raspberry cream cheese muffin has been brewing in my brain for many moons and I was so excited to finally get to make it. It goes against my norm for muffins, usually I make plain fruit muffins such as blueberry or peach. But I wanted to try something a little more indulgent and make more of a treat versus a breakfast item. Thus the raspberry cream cheese muffins were born!

When you have a deep love of raspberries and cream cheese, you naturally want to put them together. My solution is of course putting them into, one of my favorite things, a muffin. These muffins are very reminiscent of a raspberry cheesecake and feels more like a dessert than a viable breakfast option. But who really cares? Muffins aren’t the healthiest breakfast anyway, so why shouldn’t you be able to indulge once in a while? It’s rich, it’s indulgent, it’s a muffin that you didn’t know you needed.

 Raspberry Cream Cheese Muffins *Makes 6 large muffins or 12 standard muffins

1 ¼ cups All-Purpose Flour

¾ cup granulated sugar

½ tsp kosher salt

2 tsp baking powder

⅓ cup of vegetable oil 

1 large egg

⅓-½ cup of whole milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup of fresh raspberries (leave a couple aside to decorate tops)

Cream Cheese Filling

1 block of cream cheese softened, room temperature

½ cup powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease or line your muffin tins. I personally use muffin papers because I don’t want the berries to stain my tins.

For the cream cheese filling, combine room temperature cream cheese with sugar and beat with a hand or stand mixer until fluffy. Put cream cheese mixture aside.

For the muffin batter, combine flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a mixing bowl, put aside.

In a one cup wet measure, add oil and egg. Fill the rest of the measuring cup with milk until the total amount of wet ingredients measures out to be one cup, add vanilla and combine. 

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until the flour is almost all incorporated. Add your raspberries, leaving a couple raspberries for your muffin tops, gently fold to mix in the berries and the remaining flour. You do not want to overmix the batter, the batter should have some lumps but no evidence of the dry ingredients. If your muffin  batter becomes completely smooth, your muffins will have a more chewy, bread like consistency and will not be as tender.

Fill up your muffin tins half way full with your batter, add a tablespoon of the cream cheese mixture into the center of each muffin tin. Top off with the remaining muffin batter and cream cheese, you should use most or all of the cream cheese.  Decorate tops with reserved raspberries.

Bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown on the edges and the cream cheese is set and no longer wet.

Cool the muffins in the tin on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove muffins from the tin and cool completely on the wire rack.

Sit back, eat and enjoy!

*Notes: These muffins are best enjoyed fresh but they can be stored in an airtight container for at least a week in the fridge.

When muffins start to cool the tops will sink! This is perfectly fine, it’s the hot air leaving the muffin. Since the cream cheese is denser than the muffin in batter it creates a concave muffin top.