nutella cupcakes with nutella cream cheese frosting

So if you've tried Nutella how can you not like it. It's the perfect blend of chocolate andhazelnut flavor. Perfect on toast in the morning but what else can you do with it? So so much actually and I've made some cupcakes and frosting to prove it!

Nutella Cupcakes
10 tbsp butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated (regular white) sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour. sifted
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp veggie oil
Nutella. 12 teaspoons. (1 teaspoon for each cupcakes)

First cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy I like to do this for about 5 minutes on high setting. Add in eggs one at a time, until they are all fully combined into butter and sugar mixture. Add oil and vanilla then combine. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until no flour remains visible.

Preheat oven to 325F. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners. Who does this step first now a days? It takes my over about 2.5 seconds to get hot so I never preheat the oven before I make anything or else the whole house gets too hot.

So anyway, using an ice cream scoop , fill each muffin liner with batter. They should be about 3/4 full.. Top each cake with 1 huge tsp of Nutella. To make it pretty use a toothpick and swirl the Nutella around. Tip: don't over swirl and also make sure you have some of the white batter showing on the top so it doesn't look like a regular chocolate cupcake. You want the marble effect.

 

Bake for 20 minutes and then cool completely on a wire rack.

Top with Nutella cream cheese frosting (recipe below) or white cream cheese frosting and sprinkles!

P.S. I'm not a food photographer so you have to deal with my half ass picture taking. K? thanks! :)

This should yield 12 cupcakes. Key word is should. I was only able to make 11 so I guess I was a little generious on the scoops.

Nutella Cream Cheese Frosting:

• 8 oz cream cheese at room temperature
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup Nutella

Combine cream cheese and butter until smooth. Sift the powdered sugar into the butter mixture and slowly combine. Add the Nutella and mix until completely incorporated.

For plain cream cheese frosting:

Remove the Nutella.
8 oz of cream cheese
1 Tbls butter
1/4 cup of butter (instead of 2 Tbls).
1/2 C. powdered sugar (instead of 1/4).

Combine using same process as above.

*I don't remember where the recipe came from so credit goes to whoever deserves it*

rainbow cupcakes

Okay so they look like regular cupcakes from the outside but oh no... these are GORGEOUS on the inside!

For the batter I use Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe. Technically I was suppose to use white cake but all I had was yellow. It worked perfectly fine though. And if you want to go ol' school on me and make your batter from scratch then go right ahead :)

I failed and forgot to take a picture of the most important ingredient - Apple Sauce. Yep!

So the box directions say 1/3 cup oil but instead substitute the oil for apple sauce instead ok.

So I added 3 eggs, 1 1/3 cup water to the bottom of the mixer, then the cake mix and finally apple sauce on top. The other wet ingredients go in first so the cake mix doesn't get stuck to the bottom :)

After a LOTTTTT of mixing. Seriously, don't just mix for a 1-2 minutes and call it a day. Make your batter fluffier for slowly mixing then speed it up till almost the highest setting till you get to the highest speed then beat for about 5 minutes! I use setting 8 on a kitchenaid mixer.

While the batter is mixing THEN preheat your oven to 350*

Once it's done mixing, evenly divide up the mixture. This takes a while and was really messy. I used ziploc baggies but you can use plastic cups or paper bowls instead so it's less to clean up as well. I use the baggies so I can cut a hole in the corner and evenly coat the cupcake tins.

So as you see I then added food coloring to make 6 colors of the rainbow. Add as much or as little to make your own desired tint of color. Purple kinda looks like crap but in person it is really purple, not the nasty purple, blueish, brown color in the picture. Oh and I Indigo is missing but that's ok :)

Starting with purple put about 1Tlbs of mixture into each cup. Make sure it's spread evenly. Continue next with blue, green, yellow, orange and then finally red. You're making a backwards rainbow so this way a prettier color is on top.

With each layer just go slow and again, make sure it's even and try not to mix the colors.

On my oven I bake for EXACTLY 20 minutes. no more and no less. I don't even put a tooth pick in to check on them.

Once they are out take out of the pans right away and cover a little bit to cool. I half way cover them so some steam comes out but as you see by the lid I want most to stay in so it helps keep the cakes moist.

I use a store bought thing of white frosting but I like to whip it up in the mixer so it's fluffier and smoother.

To frost the cakes I put the frosting in a bag and cut the tip off. Unless you have a 2nd person to hold the bag for you then you can use my trick. I wrap the bag around a huge open vase and once it's filled it can easily come off with the frosting at the bottom and not on the sides.

Aren't they amazing! Believe me, the colors are much brighter in person.

Also, I'm not sure why but the colors from the bottom came up and over to the top while cooking. I don't know why but it looks cool none the less.

INGREDIENTS:

1. White or yellow cake mix
2. 1/3 cup apple sauce
3. 1 1/3 cup water
4. 3 eggs
5. food coloring
6. sprinkles

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. mix batter for 5-6 minutes
2. preheat oven to 350*
3. divide batter into 6 cups/bowls/baggies
4. add food coloring: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple
5. add 1tlb of each into each cake tin evenly making layers on top of each other
6. bake for 20 minutes, then remove from cake pan and cool in covered place for 1/2 hour
7. Fluff store bought frosting in mixer if desired then pipe on cakes
8. top with sprinkles or candies!