Orange and Cardamom Bakery-Style Streusel Muffins With Cream Cheese

Nothing is better than fresh citrus fruit in the winter time! I love finding new ways to incorporate citrus into baked goods. Lately, I have been craving giant, bakery-style muffins. You know the ones...that are more cupcake than muffin, covered in crumbly streusel topping, bursting with fresh fruit flavors. So, I decided to make my own. I wanted citrus to star and thought that ground cardamom complemented the flavors really well, especially when paired with a sweetened cream cheese frosting after the bake. Feel free to change up the type of citrus in these. My recipe intended to use oranges, but I had clementines on hand, so that's the zest I used in this particular bake. Be creative and enjoy! Also, there is no such thing as too much streusel topping...!
Orange and Cardamom Bakery-Style Streusel Muffins With Cream Cheese
Recipe details
Ingredients
Muffins
- 1 1/2 C AP flour
- 2/3 C brown sugar or regular is fine if you don't have brown
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- pinch salt
- 1 tsp fresh ground cardamom
- 1/2 C whole milk
- 1/4 C fresh squeezed orange juice or other citrus juice
- 4 Tbsp melted unsalted butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
Streusel
- 2/3 C sugar
- 1/2 C unsalted butter at room temp
- large pinch salt
- 1 1/2 C AP flour
- 2 Tbsp orange zest (I used clementines)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Cream Cheese
- 8 oz cream cheese
- 3 C powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
Muffins
- Preheat oven to 375, line 12-c muffin tin with liners and spray. Or, you can cut parchment paper to get that official "bakery" look and line your tray that way.
- Mix streusel ingredients together and set aside.
- Combine dry ingredients in large bowl (flour, soda, powder, salt, sugar, cardamom). Set aside.
- Combine wet ingredients. (Melted butter, milk, orange juice, vanilla, eggs). Set aside.
- Pour wet ingredients into dry and stir until just combined. Don't overmix!
- Fill each muffin space 2/3 of the way up. You will have a LOT of streusel topping so don't hesitate to top the batter with a lot of it.
- Bake for 10 minutes on center rack. Lower heat to 350 and bake another 7-10 minutes.
- While they cool, make the cream cheese frosting by blending ingredients with electric mixer. I piped into the center by simply filling a ziplock bag with the corner cut off. You can be creative if you don't have piping bags.
Tips
- Use whatever citrus fruit sounds good to you. Meyer lemons and blood oranges would both be great.
- Read the instructions entirely before starting!

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