What’s better than a chocolate muffin? A chocolate muffin topped with a luscious cheesecake layer. These Chocolate Cream Cheese Muffins are super duper delicious, freezer-friendly, and come together in just minutes.
Whether you make them part of your lunchtime meal prep or simply serve them for afternoon tea, these muffins are bound to bring a smile to your face.
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These Chocolate Cream Cheese Muffins are such a treat. Rich double chocolate muffins topped with a cheesecake-like topping, these muffins are more than worth your while.
With a homemade muffin mix on hand, you can mix up a batch in just a few minutes!
Why Make This
They’re super easy to make. You don’t need bakery muffins or a boxed muffin mix. These babies are super easy to measure and mix up.
They’re freezer friendly. Keeping muffins in the freezer, whether baked or unbaked, is such a great practice to get in the habit of doing. You can serve these Chocolate Cream Cheese Muffins for breakfast, snacks, or dessert, tuck them in lunch boxes, or treat a friend with a sweet surprise.
They’re delicious! Just wait until you taste these delicious muffins, like a muffin, brownie, and cheesecake all in one.
Ingredients
milk – You can use any fat-content dairy or plant-based milk. If you use buttermilk, you can increase the amount to 1 2/3 cups and omit the sour cream.
sour cream – Sour cream keeps these muffins soft and tender. You can swap in Greek yogurt if that’s what you go.
neutral oil – By neutral, I mean one that doesn’t have a strong flavor like olive. I like to use avocado oil, but you can also use vegetable or canola oils or even melted butter if that is what you have.
eggs – You’ll need three eggs, one for the cream cheese topping and two for the chocolate muffins. If you prefer to go egg-free, you can use flaxseed meal as an egg substitute in the muffin batter and omit the egg from the cream cheese topping. The flavor and textures will not be exactly the same, but still delicious.
homemade muffin mix – This muffin mix contains flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. You can mix up several batches of the mix to keep on hand in the pantry or freezer. There are lots of mix-in options besides what you see here.
cocoa powder and chocolate chips – These put the Chocolate in Chocolate Cream Cheese Muffins. Use whatever kind of chips you have, though dark chocolate is particularly delicious.
the cream cheese topping includes cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, and an egg. You can omit it if you prefer, but then it won’t be a Chocolate Cream Cheese Muffin.
Step-by-Step Instructions
1. Prepare the cream cheese topping.
In a large mixing bowl, place the cream cheese, one egg, sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Beat until well combined, stopping to scrape down the sides and make sure everything is combined. Set this aside.
2. Prepare the dry ingredients.
Place the muffin mix as well as the cocoa powder in a second large mixing bowl. Whisk to combine.
3. Prepare the wet muffin ingredients.
In a large mixing bowl, assemble the milk, sour cream, oil, and 2 eggs. Whisk to combine.
4. Prepare the batter
Add the wet milk mixture to the dry mixture and fold gently once or twice. Add the chocolate chips and fold until the batter is formed. It’s okay if there are a few dry bits here and there.
5. Assemble and bake the muffins
Preheat the oven to 375 and line two 12-cup muffin cups with muffin papers. This recipe makes 18 to 24 good sized chocolate cream cheese muffins.
Divide the batter among the muffin papers evenly, making a small depression in the center of each.
Divide the cream cheese mixture among the muffins.
Bake until a tester comes out with a few crumbs attached, about 25 to 30 minutes.
Freezing Instructions
To freeze muffins unbaked: Assemble the recipe as directed. Instead of baking, slide the pan into the freezer for several hours until the muffins are frozen solid. Remove the frozen muffin “pucks” from the pan and store them in an airtight container in the freezer. To bake, replace the frozen muffins into a muffin tin and bake, adding five minutes to the baking time if needed.
To freeze baked muffins: Bake the muffins according to the recipe and cool completely on the rack. Place in an airtight container or ziptop bag and store in the freezer, for up to 2 months.
FAQs
Freezing cream cheese muffins is a great way to keep indulging your muffin craving. You can freeze them unbaked in the tray; once hard, remove them in their paper liners to a storage container then bake from frozen when you want them. If freezing baked muffins, be sure to cool them completely prior to stashing in an airtight container.
You can make muffins without eggs when you use Flaxseed Meal as an Egg Substitute. For each egg, mix 1 tablespoon flaxseed meal with 3 tablespoons water. Allow this to set for a few minutes before adding to the recipe.
Recipe Costs
Knowing how much it costs you to prepare a recipe can help you decide if it’s the type of recipe to make regularly or one you might want to save for special occasions. Let’s crunch some numbers and see how this recipe pencils out.
- milk – $0.20
- sour cream – $0.60
- oil – $0.16
- eggs – $0.45
- vanilla extract – $0.25
- muffin mix – $0.92
- cocoa powder – $0.64
- chocolate chips – $0.50
- cream cheese – $0.99
- sugar – $0.11
Shopping at a mid-range grocery store at non-sale prices, you can expect to pay $4.82 for the ingredients to make 18 muffins. This works out to be 27 cents each!
Comparatively, bakery muffins start at about $1.25 a piece, so homemade is for sure the way to go.
How to save even more
Follow the Good Cheap Eats System and you’ll be able to shave more off the price of these delicious, homemade muffins.
- Visit the store with the best prices. There is a wide range of prices charged for the exact same product, depending on where you shop. Be sure that you’re frequenting the store that offers the best prices overall.
- Check the sales and clearance. The highest priced items here are the cocoa powder, cream cheese, sour cream, and chocolate chips. Watch for sales on these items and stock up so you can make budget muffins whenever you want. The holidays time is great for having sales on chocolate chips.
More Great Muffins & Quick Breads
Chocolate Cream Cheese Muffins
Equipment
Ingredients
Cream Cheese Topping
- 1 8-ounce package cream cheese softened; neufchatel cheese can also be used
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg beaten
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Muffin Batter
- 1 cup milk
- 2/3 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup neutral oil
- 2 egg
- 1 batch Mix and Match Muffin Mix
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 cup mini chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375°. Line a 12-cup muffin cups with muffin papers.
- In a mixing bowl, combine the neufchatel cheese, sugar, egg, and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl combine the milk, oil, sour cream, and eggs. Whisk until well blended.
- In a bowl, whisk together the muffin mix and cocoa powder. Add this to the liquid ingredients. Add the chocolate chips. Fold just until combined.
- Divide the batter among the muffin cups. It's okay if the cups overflow. Divide the cream cheese mixture among the cups.
- Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.
- Cool the baked muffins on a wire rack.
Notes
Nutrition
This post was originally published on January 4, 2012. It has been updated for content and clarity.
whitney zeiger
These are really good….we’ve made 48 in the past week and ate them all!!! Ha ha I have 5 children who are swimmers and we thoroughly love them!!
Jessica Fisher
Yay! So glad to hear it!
Rebecca
just printed it off…heading into the kitchen to whip these babies up…thanks for sharing!
Jackie Brown
These look divine!
christy
I can’t wait to try this too! I will probably use this idea with our amish friendship batter. I will let you know how it turns out!
Carrie @ In the sweet sunshine
I was so excited to read this recipe and realize I had everything on hand!! Except I only had 4 oz of cream cheese… so I decided to cut the recipe in half, which worked great until the very end when I needed half an egg! 🙂 It worked out, only made one muffin-tin worth (perfect for our family) and made the house smell delicious!!
The only thing I might try different next time is to put the cream cheese mixture in the middle instead of on top. I loved the top half of the muffin, but the bottom chocolate-muffin-only part [I thought] needed a little something… Still love this recipe though! Thank you!
Jessica Fisher
Thanks for being such a ready tester. I made the cheesecake topping without the egg the second time. But, the kids preferred the way it covered the muffins when it had the egg. Did you use mini chocolate chips? (I know that may not be a staple for most people.) I think it makes a diff in the cake part.
Carrie @ In the sweet sunshine
I actually did not use the mini chips, just regular chocolate chips. So maybe that would help!
Jessica Fisher
I think that will boost the chocolate flavor. They are smaller, therefore there’s more chocolate in the cup, and they spread out better, so the chocolate is more distributed in the muffin. 🙂
Janet
Those look delicious! Loving all the chocolate bliss being shared here today.
Queen of the House
I just had to share my Chewy Cocoa Brownie recipe that I discovered one night when I was craving chocolate!!!! Thankfully I had the ingredients on hand, so I could “shop” my pantry and satisfy the craving! LOL! Thanks for the link up. 😀
Wendy (The Local Cook)
Yikes, it’s salad week over on my blog, and here are all these chocolate links! I linked up a recipe for hazelnut chocolate brownies . . . must . . . resist . . . chocolate . . .
Liz@HoosierHomemade
Chocolate is definitely my favorite! Thanks for hosting!
~Liz
Jen Blacker
I could have one of those muffins for breakfast right now! Thank you for hosting.
Kristia {Family Balance Sheet}
My mouth is watering…all of these recipes look awesome.
Thanks for the linkup.
Aimee @ ShugarySweets
This is right up my alley. Thanks for hosting!!!
Kristin
You had me at cheesecake!
shari brooks
love these muffins – going to try them this weekend. I linked up some yummy treats for you: chocolate cake truffles, chocolate haystacks and gingerbread. enjoy
Nicki
Hi and HNY to you all!
I have a question about the flours. I presume that the unbleached flour is all purpose (or plain) flour? I don’t know what you mean by pastry flour, it could be we have a different name for it in the UK so if you can let me know what’s special about it that would be great – thanks!
Jessica Fisher
Yes, it’s unbleached, all-purpose flour. I think it’s also called non-bromated? Pastry flour is a very fine wheat flour. If you don’t have it, just use all purpose. Thanks for asking.
Nicki
Thanks so much for getting back to me on this, I can’t wait to make the. So many yummy chocolate recipes too!
Making My Own Luck
Your muffins look so good!
I bet those would freeze well too.
I shared my mocha quick bread.