Pumpkin Bread Pudding Muffins (★ ★ ★ ★ ☆)

I love the Fall.  I love the leaves.  The slight nip in the air.  The clothes, colors, and most of all Thanksgiving.  When it was my duty to bring muffins to our cafe again, I wanted to conjure up these comforting fall memories.

I go to Starbucks a lot.  Too much, especially since they make a mediocre latte.  But they're convenient, therefore, I love them.  And that's half the battle.  Starbucks offers a pumpkin muffin with a cream cheese top that looks fabulous.  Mind you, I've never actually tried it.  Starbucks isn't where I go if I want a baked good, but the idea of it was all I needed.

Pumpkin it was.

There were a ton of pumpkin cream cheese muffin recipes.  But most had a cream cheese filling, which is not what I was going for.

And wouldn't you know it, the recipe I ended up deciding on was a homage to the Starbucks version:
Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins Like Starbucks

Because I used such a large muffin pan, I had to cook them longer than normal and the tops got a little dark.  They didn't taste burned though.  So I decided to rectify this by dusting them with a little powdered sugar. Viola!

Instead of using the prescribed amount of canned pumpkin, I just plopped the entire thing in there.  It ended up working really well.  They were so moist!  Almost like a pumpkin bread pudding.

I also opted out on the pumpkin pie spice.  Honestly, it saved this recipe.  I like pumpkin pie, but I didn't want these muffins to have the same "tang."  I wanted them to be reminiscent of fall, but also to be able to stand alone.

These were delicious.  The cream cheese top was the perfect off-set to the pumpkin flavor of the bottoms.  I would definitely make these again.






Linking up here Oct 2012.  Because these were so good they should be revisited.