Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins with Surprise Cream Cheese Filling

I needed to make some kind of dark muffin with a cream filling for a bachelorette party. They were made in a uniquely shaped mold -- I'm not actually typing what I made, since I don't want to direct some inappropriate searches my way!

After I made the bachelorette-themed muffins, I made some standard muffins for myself, and they were absolutely delicious! I used a pumpkin muffin recipe for inspiration, and made just a few changes so it was chocolate, and wasn't as heavily spiced.

* Note: You don't have to use special dark cocoa powder, but I definitely recommend it. It is a blend of natural and dutch processed cocoa powder, which gives you the best of both worlds. It also gives you a crazy dark color, which I think is more fun

Recipe: Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins with Surprise Cream Cheese Filling
Yield: 12 muffins
Adapted from Annie's Eats

Filling:
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Muffins:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup special dark cocoa powder *see note above
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup pumpkin puree
2/3 cup vegetable oil

Mix together the cream cheese and powdered sugar in a small bowl, and keep refrigerated.

Preheat oven to 350 and spray muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, cinnamon, salt, baking soda and baking powder. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, pumpkin and oil until well blended. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture in increments, mixing until just barely combined.

Fill each muffin well with a small amount of batter, and spread out so it covers the bottom. Add a scoop of the cream cheese mixture on top, dividing evenly between all of the wells. Cover each well with more muffin batter, using up the remainder of the batter.

Bake at 350 for 25, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack. Enjoy warm (but be careful of the hot filling!), at room temperature, or even chilled (they taste really fudgy that way).

The light was weird here, and they didn't look quite as dark

Nutrition:
268 calories
15.2 g fat
33 g carbs
2.6 g fiber
4.0 g protein
53% vitamin A

And in case you were curious, here are some pictures of the "bachelorette-themed" cupcakes! I only filled part of them with the cream cheese filling, thought it made them a bit more realistic...