Healthy Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins
These healthier pumpkin cream cheese muffins are the perfect Starbucks dupe, but made from real food ingredients. They have the same yummy pumpkin flavor, warm spices, and sweet cream cheese filling as the traditional recipe, but with half the calories and fat. Plus they are gluten free and can be made dairy free, too.
Servings: 12 muffins
Calories: 181kcal
Ingredients
For the Muffins
- ¼ cup melted coconut oil avocado oil, or extra virgin olive oil (I used avocado oil)
- ½ cup maple syrup
- 2 eggs room temp
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 ¾ cup 1-1 gluten free baking flour
- 1 tsp cinnamon + extra for top of muffins
- 1 ½ tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- Optional pumpkin seeds and pinch of cinnamon for garnish like Starbucks
For The Cream Cheese Swirl
- 4 oz low fat cream cheese or 6 triangles of laughing cow cheese
- 2 tablespoon raw sugar
- ¼ tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 and prep your muffin tin with liners – I LOVE the parchment kind because you know nothing is gonna stick.
- In a medium sized bowl, mix up those wet ingredients for muffins.
- In a larger mixing bowl, mix flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Stir wet ingredients into the dry until just incorporated. Don’t overmix.
- Divide muffin batter into prepared cupcake tins.
- Using a hand or stand mixer, whip cream cheese or laughing cow cheese with sugar, vanilla, and a tiny dash of cinnamon.
- Using the back of a spoon, make a little divot in muffin batter for cream cheese filling. Place 2ish teaspoons of the cream cheese in the divot, then try to cover the cream cheese back up with the muffing batter. For a swirl effect, take a toothpick and swirl the top.
- Bake for 14-16 minutes or until muffins are set and a toothpick comes out clean (poke in the muffin park, not the cream cheese part). These were done for me right at the 14 minute mark, so watch closely!
- Enjoy!
Notes
21 Day Fix: 1/2 YELLOW, 1/6 BLUE, 1 TSP, 2 1/2 Sweetener TSP, trace PURPLE (per muffin)
WW: 8 points (per muffin) [Calculated using avocado oil and reduced fat cream cheese] **If you wanted to make these without the cream cheese swirl, they would be 6 points per muffin
Nutrition
Serving: 1muffin | Calories: 181kcal | Carbohydrates: 27g | Protein: 4g | Fat: 7g | Saturated Fat: 2g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 4g | Trans Fat: 0.003g | Cholesterol: 32mg | Sodium: 270mg | Potassium: 109mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 12g | Vitamin A: 3270IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 71mg | Iron: 1mg