1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Either use cupcake liners or generously prepare the pan with cooking spray so the muffins don’t stick.

2. In a small bowl, combine the softened cream cheese, pecans, powdered sugar, and milk. Set aside until you’re ready to fill the muffins.

3. In a large bowl combine the dry ingredients: flour, white sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves.

4. In another bowl combine the wet ingredients: pumpkin, oil, egg, vanilla, and brown sugar. I like adding the brown sugar into the wet ingredients so it will more evenly incorporate into the batter.

5. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and gently stir to begin to combine. Pour in the carrots and the raisins and stir until everything is well blended but not over mixing.

6. To your prepared muffin tin fill each muffin holder about 1/2 of the way. Add about 2 tablespoons of the cream cheese filling, then top with more batter filling to the top. Bake for 27 – 30 minutes. Allow to cool before eating.

After coming to room temperature, keep leftovers stored in the fridge since these have cream cheese in them. You can let them come to room temperature again before eating them if you’re not a fan of the cool muffin.