Nutella Cupcakes

Don't you hate it when you run out of ingredients mid-bake? I was in the middle of whipping up a batch of chocolate cupcakes, when I realised I didn't have any chocolate! D'oh. After scrambling through the cupboard I found a jar of nutella and decided to use it instead. And boy am I glad that I did. The cupcakes were absolutely delicious.

Here's the recipe if you want to try these out for yourself.

Ingredients

Nutella Cupcakes

• 125g unsalted butter (softened)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour (sifted)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 4 tbsp nutella (add more if you want the flavour to be really strong)

Nutella Buttercream

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter (softened)
• 1 1/2 cup icing sugar (sifted)
• 4 tbsp skimmed milk
• 2 tbsp nutella
• Non-pareils or other decorations (optional)

Method

Preheat oven to 180C. Beat butter, vanilla essence and caster sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy (about 2 minutes on medium-high speed). Beat in eggs one at a time, until well combined. Stir in the sifted self-raising flour and milk in two batches until all ingredients are mixed in well. Lastly stir through the nutella. Spoon mixture into a lined 12-hole muffin tray. Bake cupcakes for 15-20 minutes then leave to cool on a wire rack before adding frosting. Note, if you want your cupcakes to be domed in shape, cook them in a slightly hotter over (~200C).

To make the nutella frosting, mix the icing sugar and butter with electric beaters for about 5 minutes. Add milk, once al the icing sugar is mixed in. Mixture should be firm enough to pipe and hold its shape. Add more icing sugar if mixture is too runny. Lastly mix in the nutella. Pipe swirls of buttercream onto cooled cupcakes, then decorate as desired. I used a wilton 1M tip to pipe my swirls and coloured non-pareils as a finishing touch.

Happy Baking x