Cream cheese-filled zucchini muffins

Several of my friends wanted this recipe that I made up but I just keep forgetting to type it up and get it out.  So, I will put it on my blog and link it to facebook.

The only reason to have a zucchini plant in your garden, in my opinion, is so that you can make zucchini bread.  This year, however, we ended up with three zucchini plants (still not sure how that happened!) and we got a little tired of zucchini bread.  In fact, I still have between 12-16 loaves still in the freezer!  So I started making zucchini muffins and mini muffins which were great in lunches.  One day Markee said, "Would there be any way to put the cream cheese INSIDE the muffins, like the filled cupcakes?"  "Hmmmm," I thought, "Why not?".  So began the experiments.  And here is the end result . . .

Cream Cheese-filled Zucchini Muffins
3 c shredded zucchini         2 t baking soda
1 2/3 c sugar                         1 t salt
2/3 c vegetable oil               1 t ground cinnamon
2 t vanilla                              1/2 t ground cloves
4 eggs                                    1/2 t baking powder
3 c flour                                  1 c mini chocolate chips (optional)

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Put liners in 24 muffin cups and spray lightly with non-stick cooking spray.  Mix zucchini, sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs in a large bowl.  Stir in remaining ingredients.  Fill each muffin cup about halfway. 

 Drop a scant teaspoon of cream cheese filling on top of muffin batter in each cup.  Cover with the remainder of the zucchini batter, covering the cream cheese filling completely, filling each cup to about 2/3 full.  Bake until the muffins are golden brown and spring back when touched, about 25-30 minutes.

To make cream cheese filling, in a small bowl beat together 1 (8oz) pkg package of room temperature cream cheese, 2 T milk, 4-5 T powdered sugar and 1 t vanilla until smooth.