cranberry cream cheese muffins

I'm not a huge muffin fan.  It's only once in a blue moon that I eat a muffin that feels worth the calories.  My daughters like muffins though and have been begging me to make some.  It's an easy baking project for the kids so we went ahead and pulled out a basic sweet muffin recipe and spruced it up.

Kids like surprises so any time you can put something sweet in the middle of something so it's hidden like treasure, they eat it up, literally.

For these muffins we added cranberries to the muffin batter then spooned sweetened cream cheese on top of half the batter so it baked in the middle for a sweet gooey treat when you bite into it.

Recipe
1 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp baking powder for high altitude (2 tsp at low altitude)
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 egg beaten
3 ounces cream cheese
1/4 cup sugar
dash of vanilla

Preheat oven to 375 degrees, line your muffin tin with cupcake liners and spray with nonstick cocking spray. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl.  Combine the milk, butter, oil and egg in another bowl  Combine the wet and dry and stir just until combined.  Add 1/2 chopped dried cranberries.

In a separate bowl mix the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla.  Warm a bit in the microwave if it's not smooth.

Place a teaspoon of the muffin batter in the tin then add a dollop of cream cheese in the middle.  Top with another teaspoon of muffin batter.  Bake for 18-22 minutes until slightly brown and the tops are bouncy to touch.

Turns out Adelaide can't stand warm cream cheese so she had to scoop hers out but Arabella loved them.  For not being a muffin lover, I enjoyed mine with coffee this morning.  It's like having a bite of cheesecake in your muffin!