Double Lemon Poppy Seed Cheesecake Muffins

My husband works like a horse.  He's up and out the door by 5am every morning & often times doesn't get home until 7pm.  I try to be a good wife and send him on his way every morning with breakfast to go.  The problem with this is that I can eat the same thing for breakfast for a month straight and not get sick of it.  I'm a creature of habit. However, he is not. He told me the other day that he was getting sick of the daily English muffins with apple butter (seriously?? I LOVE those!) and he asked if I could find something new.

Thus....the muffins.
Who doesn't like a good muffin in the morning? My mom gave me a cookbook a few years back that has some fantastic muffin recipes.  I decided on this one because it would be cheap & it started with a basic muffin mix and improved on it. These muffins have to be filling, after all.

(Once they were done baking, I figured out how to take the flash off of my camera and not have the image blurry. SO much better....so I will be having much better pics from now on.)

Ingredients:

1 pkg (8oz) cream cheese

2 large eggs

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp fresh grated lemon zest

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 pkg (15.8oz) lemon poppy seed muffin mix

1 cup milk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

First thing...preheat the oven to 400 and spray the muffin pan with cooking spray.

Open the muffin mix and pour into a large mixing bowl & make a well in the center.

Place the milk, 1 egg, and oil in the well & stir with a fork to combine & break the egg yolk.

Stir the wet and dry ingredients together with a wooden spoon until combined.

It'll be a little lumpy....set it aside

Now prepare the cream cheese filling.

Zest your lemon until you have 1 tsp. I used a small lemon and that worked perfectly.

Place the cream cheese, 1 egg, sugar, lemon zest & vanilla in a large mixing bowl.

Blend with an electric mixer (I used my stand mixer) until mixture is creamy.

Divide muffin batter evenly in muffin cups.  I used a 3 tbsp scoop (Pampered Chef) and that worked perfectly.  You can also use an ice cream scoop...those are about 3 tbsp.

Then take a heaping tbsp of the cream cheese filling and drop into the center of each muffin cup.

Then pop them in the oven (center rack) for 20-22 minutes.

And THEN.....

Mmmmmmmmmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmmmmmmm

(and this is where my camera became my friend)

Look at the gooey cheesiness in the middle.

Perfection.

I need to wrap and freeze these puppies ASAP or he won't have any to eat come Monday.