Breakfast, Muffins, Recipes

SRC: Cranberry and Cream Cheese Muffins

Sarah

These sweet muffins swirled with cranberry compote and a delicious cream cheese center are the perfect afternoon snack!

Cranberry and Cream Cheese Muffins | thepajamachef.com #secretrecipeclub

Welcome to November’s Secret Recipe Club! This month I was assigned to Maxine’s blog, Why I Am Not Skinny. Maxine is a South African expat living in Brussels… two great places! I’ve been to South Africa for a few days when I was in Lesotho for part of a summer in college, and I would absolutely love to go back. On her blog, Maxine shares so many delicious recipes and restaurant recommendations. If/when I go to Brussels I will have to check out her blog again! Though I really wanted to make her Pea and Mint Risotto or Pumpkin Fritters, I settled on these Cranberry and Cream Cheese Muffins because I wanted a sweet treat. 🙂

Cranberry and Cream Cheese Muffins | thepajamachef.com #secretrecipeclub

I also kind of wanted to make these as a sort of redemption for Maxine, because her muffins didn’t come out quite as well as BBC’s picture. And I am SO glad I did. They were tangy and creamy and all sorts of deliciousness. Though they weren’t quite as simple as most muffins are–you have to make the cranberry compote and the cream cheese filling, they are well worth it. Next time [and there WILL be a next time] I think I’ll skip mashing the cranberries so as to have bigger chunks in the muffins, and I might reduce the temperature for baking down to 325 or 350 so they don’t brown quite as quickly. Some of my unpictured muffins definitely got a little dark. Maxine, I hope my muffins live up to your expectations! Thanks for a great recipe! 🙂

one year ago: Pumpkin Graham Muffins
two years ago: Pollo alla Poggia Alloro
three years ago: Homemade Maple and Brown Sugar Almond Butter
four years ago: Pumpkin Soup and Homemade Croutons

Cranberry and Cream Cheese Muffins

  • Servings: 12
  • Print

from Why I Am Not Skinny

Ingredients:

  • 100 grams/3.5 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
  • 250 grams sugar/1 cup + 2 tablespoons, divided
  • 175 grams/6 ounces fresh cranberries [frozen can also be used, just add a splash of water or apple cider to help liquify]
  • 200 grams/26 tablespoons flour – UPDATED: I used this calculator to come up with this. When I made the recipe I used my kitchen scale and didn’t measure in tablespoons… I think the previous measurement I had here was wrong. So sorry about that!
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 eggs
  • 75 ml canola oil [this is just between 1/4 and 1/3 cup]
  • 3/4 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a muffin tin with paper liners or grease well with cooking spray.

Beat together cream cheese with 2 tablespoons sugar. Place in refrigerator to chill until ready to use.

In a small saucepan, combine another 2 tablespoons sugar with 6 ounces fresh cranberries. Heat on medium, stirring occasionally, until cranberries pop. Then mash gently with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a large bowl, stir together flour and baking powder. In a smaller bowl, whisk together eggs, oil, vanilla, and almond extract. Fold in wet ingredients into the dry, then fold in cranberries. Do not overmix or else the batter will bleed.

Scoop batter–it will be thick–into prepared pan, about 1/2 to 2/3 way full. Do not overfill. Use a spoon to scoop a ball of cream cheese mixture into batter, pressing down gently. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown.

Notes:
Some of my muffins spilled over the top of the muffin cups because I filled them too full, so don’t make that mistake.

Also, you may want to skip mashing the cranberries so the batter bleeds less.

Do not overbake–cheese may still seem a bit soft. If muffins are browning too much, cover with foil for the last 10 minutes of baking or reduce heat to 325 degrees F.

Be sure to check out all the other fun recipes made this week for the Secret Recipe Club below!

 

Published by Sarah

Librarian. Runner. Wife. Jesus follower. Loves reading, Indiana basketball, trying new recipes, coffee, cuddling with my kitties, cozy scarves, and cardigans.

35 thoughts on “SRC: Cranberry and Cream Cheese Muffins”

  5. These would be especially nice over holiday weekends for overnight guests in the morning! Nice choice for the SRC! 🙂

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    1. awesome! if you do, be sure to go back and read the notes i just added to the recipe. nothing really new, just added info that i put in the blog post in the recipe so it was all together. i had some muffins get too dark and overflow so i’d hate to see the same thing happen to you!

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      1. I made them this morning, and the flavor is amazing! The only thing I’m wondering is if I didn’t get the flour measurement right. You say that the batter will be thick, but mine was really thin. So I’m thinking a bit more flour or definitely use the cupcake liners because these were really delicate and wanted to come apart when I tried getting them out of the pan.

        I’m definitely making them again. Soon. One way or the other.

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      2. Oh no! I’m glad you liked the flavors but am sorry that my recipe messed you up. This was my first time baking from a metric blog and I just measured my ingredients using my kitchen scale and used an online calculator to put amounts for my blog. I have found another calculator that might be a little more precise ( http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/conversions/grams/grams-to-cups-conversions) and have updated the flour amount from 14 T to 26 T… big difference! When I get home from work tonight I can do some weighing/measuring work to see if this is more accurate. I have double checked everything else and found that flour was the only thing that was wrong. So sorry again for your troubles. I’ve updated the recipe. Thanks!

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  9. I practically ran when I saw that fresh cranberries were back at our local store! Love the sound of these muffins! Cranberry and cream cheese sounds like a perfect match!

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  10. Huge fan of cranberry muffins so pinning this one for later! I love the tartness, and while I normally use sour cream in the dough it sounds like cream cheese will really knock these muffins out of the park

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