Nutty Cream Carrot Muffins

Wow! Three days in a row I'm here. When I looked around my blog, I noticed this entry, still in draft. I never posted it even though I wrote it back in 2013. It's not too late. So without further ado, Here are wonderfully decadent cream cheese and nut covered carrot muffins. These were so heavenly right out of the oven! The soft cream cheese topping was melt in your mouth goodness atop these beautiful, tall muffins!

The nuts were only on top, with the cream cheese, but the orange and carrot showed everywhere else!

This was a recipe out of "Company's Coming Mostly Muffins" page 43. I'll share the recipe since it was so good.

Nutty Cream Carrot Muffins recipe

4 oz. Block of cream cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
4 tsp white sugar
1/4 cup finely chopped walnuts

1 3/4 cups white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups finely grated carrot
1 cup soured milk (1 Tbsp. lemon juice with milk to make 1 cup)
3 Tbsp. frozen concentrated orange juice, thawed (I used 1 Tbsp. orange rind and 2 Tbsp. orange juice)
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla

Topping: Combine first 3 ingredients in small bowl. Add walnuts. Stir. Set aside.

Measure next 5 ingredients into large bowl. Stir. Make a well in centre.

Combne remaining 6 ingredients in medium bowl. Add to well. Stir until just moistened. Fill 12 greased muffin cups full. Spread about 1 Tbsp. cream cheese mixture on each muffin. Bake in 375 degree oven for 18 to 20 minutes until a wooden toothpick comes out clean. Let stand in pan for 5 minutes before removing to wire rack to cool. Makes 12 muffins.

Note: in the future, I will not convect bake these. I'll use regular bake so the muffins rise straight up. On convect bake, they went a little lop-sided. Terrific muffins though!

Cream Cheese Brownies

These were another square I made for today's big Easter feaster! They are from page 80 of the Company's Coming 150 Delicious Squares. They are cream cheese brownies with cherries. The bottom layer is brownie, then there is a layer of cream cheese mixed with sugar and marachino cherries. Then there is some more brownie bits dollopped on top of that. Bake it and it looks like this:

Spreading the dollops over was tricky and not fun. I think if I made these again, I'd just put all the brownie on the bottom and let the cream cheese layer be on top. It would be much easier and still come out looking about the same. Once out of the oven, cool, cover in icing, cut into squares and here's what you get:

A soft and delicious brownie. I left the walnuts out because I wanted to have at least one square with no nuts in them. These were among the first to go today. I thought they could have been more chocolate-y. (The Midnight Mints were first to go.)

Hope you had a Happy Easter!