Red bean cream cheese stuffed muffin 🍄

One of the easiest on-the-go home-made breakfast are muffins. The flavors could be sweet or savory, super healthy or just comforting. The savory ones are also a good choice for a light lunch. I find muffins really easy to make using my 101 muffin base recipe. I could create a variety versions of muffins by mixing different ingredients, adding different fillings or toppings with that moist cake base. I always like the shapes of muffins to have muffin caps, which I usually call them "mushroom heads 🍄". 

Alex sometimes got confused between muffins and cupcakes. I wonder if his definition distinguishing them is breakfast or dessert 😆? In my feelings, muffins are cakes that are more rough and heavy in texture which do not need extra beaten on the batter. The basic ingredients are butter, egg, sugar, dairy, flour and a tablespoon of baking powder that raises the batter a bit. Normally, you could bake very satisfying muffins without over-mixing all those ingredients together.

On the other hand, cupcakes have the extra fluffiness that require more whipping on the eggs and a lot of times are made with vegetable oil instead of butter to avoid the dense texture. Being stereotyped, I suppose we wouldn't usually see cupcakes served during breakfast on morning gatherings or see muffins served as desserts during parties 😙. However, everyone could make their own calls! 

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One of my favorite and popular flavor of muffins is blueberry with white chocolate chunks. The fruitiness from blueberries added with the delightfulness of melted white chocolate really brings out an attracting taste and look. 

Since I am a big fan of Japanese cuisine, I created these sweet red bean filling muffins accompanied with cream cheese. The mild sourness from the cream cheese would greatly balance the sweetness of the red bean filling, and a small pinch of black sesame seeds for a finishing touch. 

My two favorite ways of enjoying muffins are having one right after the surface cools down when they are out of the ovens and having it directly the next morning. The best part of eating it right after they are out of the oven is the very thin crust on the surface on the mushroom head. Then on the second day morning, the buttery taste and aroma would diffuse through the whole muffin and while having the moisture kept inside, the slight stickiness and softness on the surface is my favorite part.