Cream Cheese Muffins

I made these muffins and I honestly thought they were going to be a cinch! But instead of my enjoying my baking experience like I always do, these seemed to be the most complicated muffins ever known to man. I really had an awful day (let's just say the Lexus dealer lied when he said it was only going to take 'less than 2hrs'----and over a grand later...) and thought that making these muffins would calm my nerves. But instead, I misread the (simple) instructions and now am awaiting the verdict when the timer goes off to see if I just baked some hockey pucks! Well 24boxes and Just Baking seemed to make them just fine and they looked AWESOME so I'll post pics later if they indeed turned out...so much for president's day...
Cream Cheese Muffins
Adapted from Just Baking

3 cups flour
1 cup sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk
1/2 vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar

Topping
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup finely chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 375*F. Grease/spray a 12-cup muffin tin and set aside.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the center.
Stir together milk, oil, eggs and vanilla. Pour into well in the dry ingredients. Stir just until dry ingredients are moistened.

Whisk together cream cheese and 1 cup of sugar until creamy and smooth. Fold about half of this mixture into the muffin batter.

Spoon batter into greased muffin pans, about 1/2 to 2/3 full. Spoon the remaining cream cheese mixture onto the muffins, pressing the mix into each muffin with a spoon handle.

Combine ingredients for topping in a bowl. Sprinkle generously over muffins.

Bake 24 to 30 minutes until golden brown. Let cool completely before removing from pan.