Perfect Breakfast Bites - Mini Cream Cheese Filled Puffins

Okay, so this recipe isn't necessarily a cupcake, but it's too delicious to not share. I had an idea to make Cream Cheese filled Pancake balls, something I have been wanting to do ever since I have seen this contraption from William Sonoma. I do not own said contraption, but I figured there had to be another way to do it... and there was!
I found this tasty recipe for Mini Maple Pancake Muffins and used that as my foundation for the "puffins". Then I used a simple Cream Cheese Frosting recipe for the filling.

Puffins:
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
2/3 cup buttermilk
1 egg
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
2 tablespoons melted butter
ground cinnamon to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar in a medium bowl. Sift together with a wire whisk. In another bowl, stir buttermilk, egg, maple syrup and melted butter until just combined. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir with a spoon until combined. Sprinkle in some cinnamon, as much or little as you like.

Cream Cheese Filling:
4 ounces unsalted butter, softened
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and cream cheese with an electric mixer. With the mixer on low speed, add the powdered sugar a cup at a time until smooth and creamy. Beat in the vanilla extract.

Now comes the fun part! First, make sure that you have your mini cupcake pan greased up. Then I add a little layer of Puffin batter to the bottom of each cup, just to cover the bottom. After that, I put in a scoop of the cream cheese filling. I usually add about 1/2 a tablespoon in each cup. Finally, I cover the filling with the remaining Puffin batter. My cups are normally pretty level and they turn out fine. Now, pop those bad boys into the oven for about 8-10 minutes.
Makes 24 mini puffins.

 

Once they are done, dish them up and serve them with some syrup like you normally would with pancakes. I even served mine with some sliced strawberries, but any other fruit would be fine too!