Pumpkin and Cream Cheese Muffins

I have been making tons of my pumpkin muffins since the beginning of October.  It seems like I can barely keep up with the demand!! They are very popular and everyone loves them here, but lately I've been thinking about taking my pumpkin muffin recipe and "tweaking" it a little by adding cream cheese and switching out some of the white flour with wheat flour.  This past weekend was very busy and Tuesday afternoon was the first chance I had to whip these up.  I decided to be my own taste tester!  These are a little more labor intensive than my "regular" pumpkin muffins, but boy, are they worth it.  I "sampled" two of them shortly after they came out of the oven yesterday and then had one for breakfast this morning!

I sent close to a dozen in with my husband when he went to work today.  He gets to work at 8 a.m. and he sent me an e-mail a little before 9 a.m., telling me they were almost gone!  Cool, glad his co-workers liked my muffins :)

Ingredients

Filling:

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Batter:

2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup canola oil
1/2 cup water
4 large eggs
15 ounce can packed pumpkin

Topping:

1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 tablespoon white flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons margarine

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place paper liners into two 12-cup muffin tins.  Set aside.  In small bowl, put the filling ingredients.  Beat by hand or with electric mixer until smooth.  Set aside.  In large bowl, put all the ingredients for the batter in the order given and beat by hand or with electric mixer until smooth.  In small bowl, put the first three ingredients for the topping and mix well with small spoon, then "cut" in margarine with two knives until it resembles coarse crumbs.  Set aside.  Fill the 24 paper liners one-third of the way full with the batter.  In the middle of each muffin put 1 1/2 teaspoons of the filling.  Cover each muffin with another one-third of the remaining batter.  Sprinkle the topping evenly between the muffins.  Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.  Remove from oven and let cool for five minutes before transferring to wire rack to continue cooling. Makes 24 muffins.