Peabody's Eggnog Cream Cheese Muffins

While these are posted a little late for the holidays, these were awesome muffins.  I grew up in Michigan, Ohio, spent some time in Germany, England, UT, Mexico, and now Arizona.  Of all those places, only UT and Flagstaff, where I live now, are anywhere near high elevation.  I was in college in UT and didn't cook very much, so it never affected me.  Now, in Flagstaff, I cook all the time, and I have been noticing a very bad trend in my baking.  My baked goods are tanking :(.  I thought it was my oven, and that may be part of it, but after a massive failure in Pioneer Woman's carrot cake, which everyone said worked really well, I researched and found out what my problem was.  I have to change recipes for high altitude.  This should not have come as a shock to me, but it did.  Anyway, I made a couple of changes to this recipe, very slight ones, and these were not hockey pucks, and they tasted great, and they didn't spread all over, all of which have happened to me since moving to Flagstaff ;).  Culinary Concoctions By Peabody's Eggnog Cream Cheese Muffins are moist, flavorful, and turned out really well.  Aaron, Noah and I gave them a 9, and Owen gave them an 8.  These were super delicious, and moist.  Because of the high altitude problem, I made the recipe into 24 muffins, rather than the 12 the recipe suggests.  The calories per muffin were 241.  As you can see from the picture, they still didn't rise correctly, but they did alright.  I need to mess with the leavening agents and liquid/dry ingredients some more to find the right proportion.  Here's what I did:

 

For Filling:

8 oz cream cheese, softened

1 t cinnamon

1/2 c sugar

1/4 c eggnog

2 T flour

For Muffins:

2 sticks butter, softened

1 c sugar

2 t vanilla

1/4 c eggnog

2 eggs

3/4 t baking powder

3/4 t baking soda

3/4 t cream of tartar

3/4 t cinnamon

2 1/4 c flour

1 c sour cream (I used mostly plain yogurt because I ran out of sour cream)

 

1/3 c sugar

1 T cinnamon

 

Line muffin tins with paper liners.  Mix together the cream cheese, cinnamon, sugar, eggnog, and flour.  Shape into a log and refrigerate.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cream of tarter and cinnamon, and set aside.  Cream together the butter and sugar, then add the vanilla and eggnog and then the eggs one at a time, beating until incorporated.  Alternate adding in the flour and sour cream, beginning and ending with flour.  Place covered in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to chill. 

Preheat oven to 375.

Mix together the sugar and cinnamon, then roll the chilled muffin batter into balls and roll in the cinnamon sugar mixture.  After you have used up all the batter, cut little rounds of the cream cheese mixture and press into the muffins, then bake in the oven for 20-22 minutes.

 

I have changed the cooking temperature, and made the muffins smaller, both in an attempt to fix the high altitude problem.  I also used all cinnamon rather than nutmeg because I really don't like nutmeg very much :).  Try these, they are awesome!!!