Better Than the Bakery Muffins

I made the mistake of buying a different cream cheese than usual during our last grocery trip. I won't call out the brand, but I was pretty grossed out. Finding it not suitable for spreading I decided I needed to bake it into something and hope to mask the flavor. I also had some fresh strawberries that were nearing the end of their fresh and juicy stage; despite my desire for cheesecake we opted to make my strawberry cream cheese muffins.

My first optical job was next to this little coffee shop and I pretty much lived off of their ham 'n cheese croissants (I'll share this imitation at a later date), veggie bagel sandwiches, and strawberry cream cheese muffins. Then one day I learned their muffin recipe was actually from a bag mix, gasp! Over ten years later I still feel duped. This take is born of that deception, surely, I could create a far better bakery muffin. The result is my go to muffin recipe. I can assure you that you will see it again in it's various incarnations, but the batter is the same only the adds ins are changed to protect the innocent. I should warn you that this is not a "healthy" feel good about your choices muffin; this is a you should only eat half, but what the heck you did the treadmill this morning and so what if your butt rivals Montana kind of muffin. After all, it's bakery style. I used to bring these in to man I married's office and while soldiers tend to be easy to please, these were always a favorite. 



See the little helper hands? He could hardly stand to wait.

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 cup AP flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/3 cup sugar
10 TBS butter, melted
1 cup milk, I prefer whole
1 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
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1 1/2 cup sliced strawberries
6 oz cubed cream cheese

- Use room temperature ingredients, except the cream cheese or strawberries if you're using frozen ones. You want to make sure the butter doesn't solidify on you. And the cream cheese is easier to cut into nice little bits if it's been frozen for 30-60 minutes
- Pre-heat oven to 350° and grease your muffin pan including the top
- Combine dry ingredients
- In a second bowl whisk together sugar, butter, milk, sour cream, eggs, and vanilla
- Add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients, just under mix them
- Gently fold in strawberries and cream cheese, you will find your mixture is fluffy and airy, but quite thick
- Spoon into prepared pan. This recipe is designed to make 12 jumbo muffins, so once you've filled your pans you'll see additional batter in the bowl and think "What the french fries, over?!" Keep adding to your pan. Your cups will be full to about 3/4" over the top of the pan. On the other hand you can also make 18 smaller muffins by filling them to normal standards, but where's the fun in that?
- Bake 30-35 minutes; until golden brown and tester comes out clean. The muffin tops will all bake together a bit. If you like muffin tops this will make you happy because it drastically increases the top to bottom ratio of your muffin.
-Let cool about 15 minutes on a wire rack if you can wait that long, then remove from pan and enjoy.

The only happy form of muffin top.