Cream Cheese Filled Carrot Cake Muffins

I officially own a muffin tin!  I have always wanted one but never got around to getting one until yesterday.  To celebrate I decided to make scrumptious carrot cake muffins loaded with cream cheese frosting.  The best part of these muffins is the design the cream cheese makes when you bake them.  I think this one looks like a Star Wars tie fighter.

Cake Ingredients:
2 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup water
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp salt
1 cup carrots, grated

Filling Ingredients:
1 (8 oz) package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt

First make the cream cheese filling by beating together cream cheese, sugar, vanilla extract, and salt.

Grate carrots with a box grater. 

Whisk together the eggs, oil, and water.  

In another bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and salt. 

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir to combine.  Fold in grated carrots.

Prepare your muffin tin with paper liners sprayed with Pam.

Fill cups about 2/3 of the way with cake batter.  Center one tablespoon of cream cheese filling in the cup and fill the rest with cake batter.  If you are lucky enough to have a cookie scoop it would make this job a lot easier.  And neater.

Bake at 400 for about 20 minutes.  They should spring back when touched and will have beautiful designs when they come out.

So pretty!

Let cool on a cooling rack.  Serve immediately for gooey filling, or let them cool for stiffer filling.