Recipe: Blueberry Cream Cheese Muffins

A weekend breakfast favorite that’s quick, easy and delicious!

Years ago, a friend of mine brought blueberry cream cheese muffins to share with our class at church. She said it was her grandmother’s recipe, and I was hooked at first bite. 

We’ve all had cream cheese muffins that feature a wonderful, creamy filling in the center. And, don’t get me wrong, those are delicious. (And if you look hard enough, you’ll find a really delicious recipe for pumpkin cream cheese muffins I brought over to this website from my old blog.) But the beauty of this recipe is that there’s no cream cheese filling. Instead, the cream cheese is combined with sugar, eggs and vanilla, then stirred into the batter. 

The result? Moist, delicious muffins that taste rich. Plus, they’re easy and fairly quick to make. The recipe I rely on the most when making these breakfast treats is from Divas Can Cook, but I’ve adapted it just a smidge. 

Ingredients

• ½ cup canola oil (vegetable oil is fine, I just usually have canola oil on hand) 

• 1 cup granulated sugar

• 4 ounces cream cheese (you should probably let it come to room temperature. I rarely do.) 

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

• 1 ½ cups flour

• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• ½ cup buttermilk (I never have buttermilk. I use milk/heavy cream with a tiny bit of white vinegar added) 

• Blueberries (at least a cup, but generally whatever feels right to me) 

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and grease your muffin tin (or use liners). I usually use a jumbo muffin pan, mostly because I have an amazing one from Pampered Chef and I love using it. 

2. Cream the cream cheese in a stand mixer or with your hand mixer. I usually start this first because I rarely remember to get cream cheese out of the fridge early enough for it to come to room temperature. Is room temp better? Probably. But I cream mine separately until it starts to stick to the sides of the bowl. 

3. Add in sugar and vegetable oil, scraping sides to make sure cream cheese mixes with the other ingredients. 

4. Stir in vanilla. 

5. Mix in the flour, baking powder and salt. All professional bakers are going to tell you to combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then stir into the wet ingredients. And that’s probably what you should do. But I live in a world where I want to have as few dishes to wash as possible, so I usually just add these ingredients to my mixer bowl and go on with my life and the recipe. Do what you think is best. 

6. As you’re mixing in the dry ingredients, start pouring in a little of the buttermilk, scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition to make sure that everything is incorporated. 

7. Add the blueberries. I love using my mixer for all the things, but you’re going to want to fold in your blueberries (washed, please) by hand. The mixer will just result in broken berries, which you don’t want. 

8. Bake for 15-20 minutes in a regular muffin tin; about 25-30 in a jumbo muffin pan. But you know your oven better than I do, so watch your muffins and remove when the tops are golden brown. 

9. Cool briefly, then serve warm. Sometimes, I like to split the muffins and serve with a tiny pat of melting butter. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.