The Creamy, Dreamy One-Ingredient Muffin Upgrade

Cream cheese—yes, the silky smooth bagel topping—adds a luxurious new layer to any breakfast muffin.
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Photo by Chelsea Kyle

I absolutely love cream cheese. There's usually a tub of it in my fridge and the stuff regularly makes its way on into bagels and crusty bread for quick weekday breakfasts. But, what else, really, is cream cheese good for? I don't cook with cream cheese—pasta sauces, dips, or any other savory application has never appealed to me. But I might start baking with it.

That's because I was recently inspired by Neale Holaday, pastry chef at Brooklyn restaurants Diner and Marlow & Sons, who got the genius idea to start using cream cheese in a few of her muffins during the dead months of winter. While there's not much local produce around to inspire the pastry case at Marlow, there is an abundance of great citrus from California. Holaday put together the base of a lemon-poppy seed muffin and thought that a pop of cream cheese would add "a rich note." And it totally worked.

How do I pull this off at home? Do I get a fancy piping bag, make like Dunkin' Donuts, and inject the stuff into the middle of a fresh-out-of-the-oven muffin? Nope. The process is actually a whole lot simpler. First of all, you can cream cheese-ify any muffin recipe you're using, including any of the recipes featured in our Recipe Freestyle. Holaday likes to pair cream cheese with fresh blueberries (when they're in season) and just about any variety of jam.

From there, follow whatever recipe you decide on and scoop the batter into a muffin tin. Now you're ready to add cream cheese. Remove the cream cheese from refrigerator and, rather than letting it temper and come to room temperature, immediately dice it into quarter-inch square pieces while cold. Sprinkle a heaping teaspoon worth the diced cream cheese over each cup full of batter and finish with a pinch of sugar. Then, something magical happens: The cream cheese naturally sinks into the batter while baking, perfectly embedding itself within the walls of your now-baked muffins.

So, cream cheese, I'm sorry I ever doubted you. I should have known all along that you were good for so much more than bagels. But I still won't cream cheese alfredo sauce, no matter how many catchy jingles Philadelphia Cream Cheese puts on television.