A homemade baking mix gets jazzed up with two forms of chocolate and a cheesecake like topping. Delicious and easy to pull together!
As you may know, we’re in the midst of a Pantry Challenge over here. While I’ve not completely sworn off grocery shopping this month, I am “shopping my closet” as it were before buying something more. I love the Pantry Challenge because it really encourages me to be creative with what I already have. These muffins are a great example.
I had a bag of homemade muffin mix in the freezer just begging to be used. And I’d been wanting to choco-fy it for some time. So, in went cocoa powder and chocolate chips. Then, to gild the lily — and use up one of many cream cheese packages in my fridge — I added a cheesecake topping.
We tested these muffins twice this week. I say “we” because my kids all had opinions about it. Yesterday’s cheesecake topping was better than today’s. But, today’s chocolate mixture was better than yesterday’s. So, I’m giving you the best of both worlds.
This recipe is an awesome way to jazz up a homemade baking mix.
Recipe: Chocolate Cheesecake Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup oil
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 2 eggs
- 3 cups unbleached flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup mini chocolate chips
- Cream Cheese Topping
- 8 ounces neufchatel cheese (light cream cheese)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 °. Line 24 muffin cups with paper liners. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flours, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. (If preparing as a mix, simply combine all these ingredients in a ziptop bag, label well, mark with the wet ingredients and baking instructions.)
- In a separate bowl, combine milk, oil, sour cream, and eggs. Whisk to blend. Add wet ingredients to dry. Fold gently until mostly moistened, but still lumpy. Fold in chocolate chips.
- Divide the mixture amongst the muffin cups, about 1/4 cup batter for each cup.
- In another mixing bowl, combine the neufchatel cheese, sugar, egg, and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Divide the cheese mixture amongst the cups.
- Bake 20 to 30 minutes or until a tester comes out with a few crumbs attached.
Preparation time: 20 minute(s)
Cooking time: 20 minute(s)
Number of servings (yield): 12
Who wants a Chocolate Butterhorn?
Your muffins look so good!
I bet those would freeze well too.
I shared my mocha quick bread.
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!
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.
Thanks so much for getting back to me on this, I can’t wait to make the. So many yummy chocolate recipes too!
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
You had me at cheesecake!
This is right up my alley. Thanks for hosting!!!
My mouth is watering…all of these recipes look awesome.
Thanks for the linkup.
I could have one of those muffins for breakfast right now! Thank you for hosting.
Chocolate is definitely my favorite! Thanks for hosting!
~Liz
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 . . .
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. 😀
Those look delicious! Loving all the chocolate bliss being shared here today.
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!
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.
I actually did not use the mini chips, just regular chocolate chips. So maybe that would help!
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. 🙂
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!
These look divine!
just printed it off…heading into the kitchen to whip these babies up…thanks for sharing!
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!!
Yay! So glad to hear it!