A year and a half ago, my dear friend Alison gave me the most beautiful cookbook for my birthday. The Thomas Keller Bouchon Bakery. It has been my coffee table book every since. While I have dreams of making every recipe in the book, so far I am stuck on the carrot muffins, blueberry muffins, and lemon poppy seed muffins. They are both so delicious that I don’t have any reason to branch out.

Flash forward to this weekend. I had 8 oz. of cream cheese in my refrigerator that was about to expire, so I HAD to bake something with cream cheese. I’ve been on a whole wheat muffin kick recently, and King Arthur Flour had a recipe for Cream Cheese Carrot Cake Muffins. So! Then I had an idea to make the amazing Bouchon Bakery carrot muffins with a cream cheese filling while replacing some of the all purpose flour with white whole wheat flour.

These muffins require you to shred the carrots individually, but it makes them oh so delicious. The traditional recipe has an oat topping, but since I was adding the cream cheese filling, I skipped the topping.

Enjoy!

Bouchon Bakery Carrot Muffins
(ever-so slightly adapted)

1st:
Shred 1 ¾ cup carrots

2nd:
Sift together (I don’t have a sifter, so I just stir with a fork):
90 grams whole wheat flour (5/8 cup + 1 tsp.)
90 grams all-purpose flour (5/8 cup + 1 tsp.)
¾ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt

3rd:
In a separate bowl, whip with a fork:
1 cup + 2 tsp. sugar
½ cup + 2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla bean paste

Mix in:
1 egg

4th:
Gently fold the flour mixture into the liquid mixture. I did this in three parts.

5th:
Stir in the shredded carrots.

6th:
Cover and leave in the refrigerator overnight.

7th:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix 8 oz. cream cheese with 1/8 cup sugar.  Fill half of muffin cups with batter. Place a dollup of cream cheese mixture on top. Then cover with the rest of the batter.

Lower temperature to 325. Bake for 18-20 minutes