mini muffins!

whew! i'm still here folks. fatigue hit me like a truck a couple weeks ago, and i kept on truckin' through it thinking it was just the result of growing this sweet little number four, building a backyard fence, and helping my husband get ready for his first trip out of the country since his youth. then the sweet nurse at my doctor's office called to tell me that my glucose test came back all awesome (so i can actually eat these muffins!!), but my iron is low. oh! that explains a lot! so besides upping the iron and munching on spinach, i've been napping and knitting and forgetting about this here space. but then tonight after having a too-early dinner, the kids and i decided we needed to put our mini muffin pan to use and make something that tastes as good as that dang maple sticky buns candle that's been burning all afternoon smells. enter the mini pumpkin cream cheese muffins! i had found a couple different recipes on pinterest, but nothing that appealed to my laziness, so i sorta combined a couple different things and i'm diggin' the result. 

i remembered seeing back around thanksgiving the recipe for easy pumpkin cake, where you just add a can of pumpkin to a cake mix, but i decided to just let the pumpkin substitute some of the eggs and the oil. so i still added one egg and a cup of water to the mix. note: this would have rocked if i'd have had a spice cake mix handy, but since i didn't i did throw in a couple teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice and i'm glad i did.

for the filling i used a 8oz block of cream cheese, a tablespoon of all purpose flour, 1/4 c sugar, some vanilla, and an egg... just pretend that one in the background rolled up to be next to these guys.

then i just put a little blob of filling on top of the semi-filled muffin liners.

and topped that with a final blob of cake batter. toss them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 15-18 minutes and enjoy!

this made 4 dozen mini muffins. 

:)

Muffins:

1 cake mix (spice would be best, or yellow with pumpkin pie spice added)

1 can pumpkin

1 egg

1 c water

Filling: (just beat these things with a mixer until completely smooth)

8oz cream cheese, softened

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 c sugar

1 Tbs flour