Nutella Self-frosting Cupcakes

If you have never heard of Nutella then you are in for a treat. Here in the USA with love our peanut butter, but in Italy they love their Nutella. Will Nutella in a chocolate and hazelnut spread; you can find it on the same shelf right next to the peanut butter. When my daughter Brandy was home for Easter last week she was looking through my pantry and found my Nutella (she loves Nutella just as much as I do) she said I can’t believe that you haven’t’ eating all your Nutella yet. I just love to eat it with a spoon just like most people love to eat peanut butter. I told her I was saving it to make a Nutella pound cake recipe that I found on a web-site. Will today I decided to make the pound cake when I found this recipe on GroupRecipes.com and I just had to give it a try. When you make these cupcakes and I know you will, here is a hint for swirling the Nutella into the batter make sure to hold the paper liners with your finger tips.

Nutella Self-frosting Cupcakes
10 tbsp. butter, softened
¾ cup white sugar
3 eggs
½ tsp. vanilla
1¾ cups flour
¼ tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1/3 cup Nutella

Preheat oven to 325⁰F. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners.
Cream together butter and sugar, add in eggs one at a time, until fully incorporated; add vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until batter in uniform and no flour remains. Using a scoop, fill each liner ¾ full with batter. Top each cake with 1 ½ tsp Nutella.

Swirl Nutella in with a toothpick, making sure to fold a bit of batter up over Nutella.

Bake for 20 minutes. Remove to wire rack to cool completely.