Carrot Cake Muffins with Cream Cheese Filling

I made these last week for my weekly staff meeting, following the King Arthur Flour recipe. I ran into a few bumps along the way, but it actually turned out to my benefit because I found something I like even more :)

Preheat the oven to 400' F. Lightly grease a bite size muffin pan (which was the bump in the true recipe, but I promise the bite size are better), or line a regular size muffin pan with paper muffin cups and grease the cups. If you'd like to you can do half small and half regular, which is what I did.

For the filling, place one unwrapped 8 ounce package of cream cheese in a microwavable bowl, and heat for 40 seconds. Stir in 1/4 cup granulated sugar.

Now for the dry ingredients, whisk together the following:

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar
¼ cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon salt

Mix the following wet ingredients separately:

2 large eggs
3/4 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, and add 1 cup of grated carrots (about 2 large carrots). Stir the ingredients together (do not beat).

Now for the regular size muffins, fill 2 Tbsp of batter in each muffin paper. Then dollop on a heaping table spoon of the filling. (For the bite size muffins, just half these measurements).

Cover with enough batter to fill the muffin cups quite full. The batter will come to within about 1/4″ to 3/8″ of the top of each muffin cup.

If you'd like to, you can add course sugar to the top before putting in the oven, or you can leave them plain and frost them with any extra cream cheese filling.

Bake the regular size muffins for about 20 minutes, and the bite size for about 11 minutes, each on 400'. Once they are done, use a for to tilt the muffins on their side. This way the bottom of the muffin doesn't continue to cook or harden.

And then you're finished! These muffins are much more tasty when they are warm and the cream cheese filling is soft, but they keep well for breakfast also. I thought my bite size ones were even better than the regular size, but maybe that was just me. Let me know what you think and if you have any other suggestions :)

- And everyone loved them, might I add.