Soft strawberry studded muffins layered with a light cheesecake filling and topped with brown sugar streusel. A necessary indulgence any morning of the week.
I’ve been craving strawberries like nobody’s business lately. I’m probably just craving fresh fruit in general since I’m constantly surrounded by this. Not that I’m complaining. I made a strawberry smoothie 3 days in a row and when Sunday morning rolled around, these strawberry cheesecake muffins came to life.
They’re bright and cheery, packed with berries, help beat the winter blues, and similar to strawberry bread but in muffin form. And the best part? There’s a cheesecake surprise inside.
I firmly believe there should be a cheesecake surprise inside all muffins.
Today’s strawberry muffins are a mix of my pumpkin cream cheese muffins and these blueberry muffins with streusel topping. Two personal and reader favorites. The recipe idea came to me not only from my strawberry craving but for the abundance of cream cheese in my refrigerator. At one time, I counted 12 packs of cream cheese. Yes, it’s ridiculous. I’ve been testing a candy bar cheesecake recipe for my next cookbook. Back to muffins. There are three parts:
Let me begin with the muffins themselves.
The muffin batter is almost identical to my blueberry muffin batter. It begins with creamed butter and sugar which gives the muffins a soft, cake-like texture similar to cupcakes. So, you’ll be eating strawberries ‘n cream cupcakesfor breakfast. I love that about this muffin recipe.
The eggs provide structure and richness. Lately, I’ve been baking with Eggland’s Best eggs exclusively. Sure, I baked with them before whenever I saw them on sale but once I learned about their superior nutrition (more omega-3’s!), they are all I use. The yogurt packs some serious moisture into each muffin. I like to use nonfat plain Greek yogurt, but vanilla or strawberry flavored would be just as tasty here. Also lending to the muffin’s moist texture? The plethora of strawberries. Strawberries are so juicy that I leave out the milk entirely from the muffin batter. Typically, milk is used to lighten up muffin batter; these muffins are a little dense without it. However, the wet strawberries give off enough liquid that adding milk would just be overkill to the fragile batter.
Next up? The cheesecake filling. It’s so, so good. You only need 4 ingredients. Make sure you don’t leave out the egg yolk. The egg yolk is what makes the filling resemble light and fluffy cheesecake. Without it, these would just be cream cheese filled muffins. Which is fine if that’s what you prefer. In my opinion, the cheesecake filling is tastier.
Just like my pumpkin version, you’ll layer the muffin batter and the cheesecake filling into the muffin liners. 1 layer muffin batter, 1 layer cheesecake, 1 layer muffin batter. It’s ok if some of your cheesecake filling is visible on the top or on the sides. In fact, I always make sure there is some filling peeking out. That’s how you get pretty cheesecake swirls on top and showing on the sides. Muffin prettiness is important to this baker.
Finally? The streusel. The streusel is simple: brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and cold butter that you will cut into the rest of the streusel ingredients. Sprinkle this onto the tops of the muffins before baking.
My number #1 streusel tip: gently press streusel down into the batter so it won’t fall off the sides as the muffins are rising. A lot of perfectly tasty streusel is wasted that way!
Like I do for most of my muffin recipes, you’ll bake the muffins for 5 minutes at a very hot temperature. Then, keeping the muffins in the oven, switch to a lower temperature for the remaining bake time. If you’re new around here, let me explain why I do this. This initial high temperature will quickly lift the muffin tops, then the centers will bake during the lower temperature bake time. Please note that because of the heavy cheesecake filling, these muffins won’t be as sky-high as most of my muffin recipes.
Let’s not forget what I said above about these muffins. Totally worth repeating. It’s like eating strawberries ‘n cream cupcakes for breakfast.
It looks like a ton of ingredients. But good news: most of them are repeated throughout each layer. Start baking!
Soft strawberry studded muffins layered with a light cheesecake filling and topped with brown sugar streusel. A necessary indulgence any morning of the week.
