Fall into fall with these deliciously light and perfectly flavored vegan pumpkin muffins with Cream Cheese Swirl. An easy, fail-proof, autumnal pastry that will warm up your home and fill up your belly. Made in just 30 minutes!
I hate to be cliché but, friends, PUMPKIN season is upon us!
My first pumpkin recipe of the year is always exciting for me. It means fall has truly arrived with all its autumnal splendor. Last year I kicked off the season with this Pumpkin and Smokey Tempeh Chili and the year before that it was my Peanut Pumpkin Curry. If you want to know my favorite pumpkin recipe from past years, I would have to say this Pumpkin Alfredo Pasta. So creamy and delicious!
But then these vegan pumpkin muffins with cream cheese came along and everything changed.
How to make Vegan Pumpkin Muffins {Video}
Recommended Ingredients & Equipment
These muffins are a variation of last year’s Vegan Cheesecake Muffins. Since sharing those on the blog, I have had several requests for a plain and simple vegan pumpkin muffin recipe. And so, per your request, a warm, light and fluffy, pumpkin muffin that is bursting with pumpkin flavor and fall spices.
Ingredients & Substitutions
- All-Purpose Flour – For healthier flour options, you can use 1:1 gluten-free flour blends, buckwheat, or spelt flour.
- Baking Soda
- Spices – You will need cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and salt.
- Pumpkin Puree – Make sure to use canned pumpkin and NOT pumpkin pie filling.
- White & Brown Sugar – Check out my guide to vegan sugars and alternative sugar replacements. For a healthier sugar alternative, I recommend coconut sugar.
- Applesauce – This is the binder of the recipe. You could replace it with ½ mashed bananas, an additional ½ cup of pumpkin puree, or a variety of other egg replacers.
- Coconut Oil
- Vanilla Extract
- Vegan Cream Cheese
Best Vegan Cream Cheese
For the cheesecake filling, I used Go Veggie's classic cream cheese made with coconut.
Go Veggie’s cream cheese is made from coconut for a non-GMO, no cholesterol, vegan alternative. I love Go Veggie, a company dedicated to promoting healthier lifestyles by providing delicious plant-based cheese alternatives. Their cheeses have more calcium, equal protein, less fat and fewer calories compared to dairy cheese. Their mission – to help cheese lovers enjoy all their favorite cheesy foods and feel great about it.
Recommended Equipment
For all my vegan muffin recipes, you’ll need basic kitchen equipment such as a mixing bowl, utensils, a wire cooling rack, and a muffin baking pan. I also recommend using an ice cream scoop to evenly and cleanly scoop your batter. (<<affiliate links)
Check out the full list of my recommended kitchen tools and gadgets.
How to Make Vegan Pumpkin Muffins
Step One – Make the Batter
Whisk together all your dry ingredients in a bowl. That’s your flour, baking soda, salt, and spices.
In a separate bowl (or liquid measuring cup) mix together your wet ingredients. That’s pumpkin purée, sugars, apple sauce, coconut oil, and vanilla extract.
Combine the wet ingredients with the dry, mixing until you have a uniform batter. Don’t over-mix as this will make your muffins dense and gummy.
Step Two – Make the Cream Cheese Swirl
In a separate bowl combine cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla extract with a fork. Stir until smooth.
Step Three - Scoop and Bake
Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin tin, filling each mold about ⅔ of the way full. Top with 1 tablespoon of cream cheese mixture and, using a toothpick, swirl to combine.
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links.
Bake for 20 minutes at 350 F. To check for doneness, insert a toothpick in the middle of a muffin. The muffins are done when the toothpick comes out clean. Pull from oven and let the vegan muffins cool for 10 minutes in the muffin tin before transferring them to a wire cooling rack.
Pro Tip: Make sure to let your muffins cool in the muffin tin first. If you flip them out too quickly, the muffins may fall apart.
Serving And Storing
Serve these muffins immediately. They come out of the oven warm, buttery, and hard to resist!
Store leftover muffins in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days. You can also freeze these muffins for up to 2 months. To thaw, pull the muffins from the freezer and let them thaw at room temperature for several hours.
Tips and Tricks
- Make sure not to over-mix your batter. When the batter is over-mixed, it allows gluten stands to form which leads to gummy dense pastries. We’re looking for light and fluffy!
- Spray your muffin tin well! Or, if you’d prefer, use cupcake holders. This will prevent the batter from sticking to the pan.
- Fill up your muffin molds about ⅔rds of the way full. If you do much more, the muffins will spill over as they rise.
- Let your muffins cool for 10 minutes before flipping them out onto a wire cooling rack.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sure. If you would like to make this recipe oil-free, simply swap out the oil for additional applesauce at a 1:1 ratio.
Can this muffin batter be made in advance?
Yes! If you want to make this muffin batter in advance, store the batter in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 48 hours.
To bake the muffins, preheat the oven and bake according to the instructions. However, these muffins may take a few minutes longer to bake since the batter will be chilled. The muffins will also be slightly denser as the baking soda begins to activate once it’s mixed into the batter, causing it to be slightly less potent.
Can I make this recipe gluten-free?
For sure! For gluten-free muffins, I recommend using a 1:1 baking blend.
More Vegan Pumpkin Recipes
- Pumpkin Pie Overnight Oats
- Pumpkin Coffee Cake
- Oatmeal Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Gluten-free Pumpkin Date Bars
More Vegan Muffin Recipes
Vegan Pumpkin Muffins with Cream Cheese
Ingredients
Pumpkin Muffins
- 1 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon cloves
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 (15 oz) can of pumpkin puree
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ½ cup apple sauce
- ½ cup coconut oil
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Cream Chesee Swirl
- 8 ounce GO VEGGIE vegan cream cheese
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray two muffin tins with cooking oil and set aside.
- In a small bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, spices, and salt. In a large bowl combine pumpkin puree with both sugars, mixing to combine. Add apple sauce, oil, and vanilla extract and stir until smooth. Fold dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
- In a separate bowl combine cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla extract with a fork. Stir until smooth.
- Fill muffin molds ⅔ of the way full. Top with 1 tablespoon of cream cheese mixture and, using a toothpick, swirl to combine.
- Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and allow muffins to cool for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
Notes
- Make sure not to over-mix your batter. When the batter is over-mixed, it allows gluten stands to form which leads to gummy dense pastries. We’re looking for light and fluffy!
- Spray your muffin tin well! Or, if you’d prefer, use cupcake holders. This will prevent the batter from sticking to the pan.
- Fill up your muffin molds about ⅔rds of the way full. If you do much more, the muffins will spill over as they rise.
- Let your muffins cool for 10 minutes before flipping them out onto a wire cooling rack.
Hi, I’m Sarah. I’m a 14-year (and counting) vegan, professionally trained photographer, former pastry chef, founder of My Darling Vegan, and author of the
kjn says
They taste good, but look bad enough that frosting might be order to hide the potholes in the top. In similar non-vegan recipes, the cream cheese mixture would contain egg, so hold volume just like the muffin batter. These cream cheese swirls inside collapsed and on the outside melted into Elmer's glue colored smears. I wonder if some egg replacer would help without ruining the flavor??
Marsha-Davis says
These muffins are absolutely wonderful. We ate them warm out of the oven because we couldn't resist. The only changes I made I used pumpkin pie spice, in place of all the other spices.
Mayeli Echenique says
Can I make this into a loaf. Actually doing it now, LOL currently baking time is 1 hr. Do you have a time for a bread loaf pan? I used monk fruit sugar and vegetable oil, organic truth vegan cream cheese and coconut sugar instead of brown as replacements. Smells great!
Natalia says
Just made these, did mini muffins instead of regular sized and they turned out fantastic! Just baked for about 5 minutes less than what was recommended for the regular muffins. Toffuti brand cream cheese is also a great option and worked perfect for these. Thanks for my new favorite fall recipe !
Linda says
I wanted to love these. Seems recipe may call for too much oil? And then the 1 tsp of cheese swirled in made mine a gooey blob :-(. Will see if cooling helps. But right now they are just flat and wet.
Aly says
I just made these for a second time. The first time I loved them, this time they were very wet and flat... I realized it was because the can of pumpkin I used was way more than 15oz, so I added way too much pumpkin. That may have been your problem too. Just an idea.