If you love Nutella then you'll love this easy Nutella muffin recipe. With a delicious vanilla muffin base and a surprise centre of Nutella plus a crunchy cinnamon sugar topping, these muffins are as easy as they are delicious!
About These Nutella Muffins
These muffins are for Nutella-holics. If you love chocolate hazelnut spreads then you'll love the hidden centre of melting Nutella in the middle of these muffins. Plus they are easy, use pantry stapes and all you need is a bowl, a jug and a spoon!
Can I put Nutella in the middle of a cupcake? Yes!! As long as it starts off semi frozen and is encased in muffin batter it is fine. It is also fine to swirl some Nutella on the top of a muffin or cupcake and then bake it. If you bake straight Nutella in the oven for too long, it will burn.
Ingredients For Nutella Muffins
Nutella - or use any chocolate hazelnut spread. You need a lot for the filling and swirls, just under 400g/14ozs. I've even made my own version of Nutella.
Cake flour - This is a mixture of plain all purpose flour and cornflour/fine cornstarch. Always use cake flour when making cakes. The lower protein level in cake flour turns out a more tender cake. You can find cake flour at the supermarket or you can make it at home (I show you how in the recipe below).
Baking powder - not bicarb but baking powder. Make sure that it is in date.
Fine salt - I always add a bit of salt in my sweet baked goods to balance the sweetness.
Caster or superfine sugar - not regular white sugar as it isn't fine enough and won't melt into the other ingredients.
Oil - opt for a neutral oil like canola or grapeseed. Olive oil has a strong flavour so you don't want to use it here.
Natural Greek yogurt or sour cream - any sort of acidulated dairy is great like yogurt, sour cream or buttermilk. The acids in these help break down the gluten to produce a more tender cake. You can also add 1-2 teaspoons of lemon juice or vinegar to milk to "curdle" it if you don't have yogurt or sour cream.
Eggs - use large eggs at room temperature; these are to help the mixture rise.
Vanilla - I like using vanilla bean paste the best, followed by extract (or even essence).
White sugar and ground cinnamon - for the topping we want it to be slightly coarse so use regular white sugar and not caster or superfine sugar.
Tips For Making Nutella Muffins
1 - Use two tablespoons to make the frozen Nutella balls. They only need 10-15 minutes to semi freeze them so start off with these and by the time you're ready to use them in the batter they will have partially frozen. You can freeze the Nutella overnight or for longer. Freezing it makes the Nutella easier to handle.
2 - I have two ice cream scoops from my adopted mom Barbara and I use them a lot. They're great quality and I use the small one for the Nutella balls and the large one to fill in the muffin cases. If you make a lot of muffins or cupcakes I recommend buying some spring loaded ice cream scoops for filling the cases. These Vollrath ones I have are expensive (3/4 oz scoop and 2 oz scoop) but they are amazing quality and I have found cheaper ones break after a while whereas these are still going strong. They're also fantastic to make meatballs with.
3 - You can omit the Nutella swirl on top and just replace with the cinnamon sugar (don't skip the cinnamon sugar! It's delicious).
4 - These muffins can be stored for up to 3 days at room temperature. They can also be frozen for 2-3 months.
5 - You can heat these muffins up in the microwave or they also heat up nicely in the air fryer for 5 minutes.
Preparation time: 15 minutes plus 10 minutes freezing time concurrently
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Makes 12 muffins
Ingredients Needed
336g/11.8ozs Nutella
330g/11.6ozs cake flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon fine salt
270g/9.5ozs caster or superfine sugar
150ml/5.3 flozs oil (neutral like canola or grapeseed)
400g/14ozs natural Greek yogurt (or sour cream or buttermilk)
2 eggs, room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla
60g/2ozs Nutella for top swirl
1 tablespoon/15g/0.5oz white sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Cake flour can be bought at the supermarket. You can also make it at home. To make 1 cup/150g/5.2ozs of cake flour replace 2 tablespoons of plain all purpose flour with cornflour/fine cornstarch and whisk well. I usually mix up a big batch of this and keep it in a container ready for baking cakes as it produces a softer texture.
Step-By-Step Instructions
These look huge but they're not!
Step 1 - First scoop the Nutella into 12x 28g/1oz balls using two tablespoons or a small ice cream scoop and place on a sheet of parchment on a baking tray. Freeze for at least 15 minutes while you make the batter.
Step 2 - Preheat oven to 200C/400F fan forced and line a muffin baking tray with 12 liners. Sift the cake flour and baking powder into a large bowl and then whisk in the salt and sugar. In a large jug, whisk the oil, yogurt, eggs and vanilla until smooth. Make a well in the dry mixture and fold in the egg mixture making sure not to over stir and make sure to catch any flour at the bottom of the bowl, around 8-10 swirls with the spatula.
The first scoop of batter
Step 3 - Mix the sugar with the cinnamon and heat the extra Nutella in the microwave for 20 seconds to loosen up.
Then submerging the semi frozen Nutella into the batter
Step 4 - Take a large or 60g/2oz ice cream scoop and scoop some batter into the muffin liners. Take the Nutella balls out of the freezer and sink each ball of semi frozen Nutella into the batter submerging it 3/4 of the way down. Divide the rest of the batter among the muffin cases so that it covers the Nutella and smooth over with an angled spatula. Place the Nutella in a small ziplock bag and pipe a swirl over each muffin and then take a chopstick or skewer and swirl the Nutella making figure 8 patterns. Sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar. Bake for 10 minutes at 200C/400F fan forced and then reduce heat to 180C/350F fan forced and bake for another 10 minutes. Cool for 15 minutes and then place on a cooling rack. Serve while warm and the Nutella is gooey.
Swirling on top with more Nutella
Then cinnamon sugar!
Personal Note
These are so easy that they can be whipped up before people come over for a party. Plus there's something that happens when you offer someone something stuffed with Nutella-people absolutely love it. Whenever we have the Elliotts over I always make sure to bake a lot because the nieces and nephews love baked good because they don't get a lot of them at home. Mr NQN's nephews Jett and Finn are real fans of cakes especially. Last time they came over for fondue but I had a whole spread of baked goods to follow as well.
We invited everyone to come over at 1pm for lunch. Mr NQN's sister Amaya and Laporello arrived on time with kids Jett and Finn. The cheese fondue was made and ready to go. We waited for a while but the kids were totally transfixed by the copper cauldron of melted cheese. "Can we try some?" they asked and we figured that they could try a bit. Then as we got a message that Manu was running very late. Like over an hour late. By then the kids were really into eating the fondue. Fondue waits for no person and cannot sit there bubbling for over an hour. They were running so late that Jett remarked, "We will have to leave before they get here!" and then he suggested that we teach them a little lesson.
When they arrived, which was 1.5 hours later at 2:30pm Jett, Finn, Amaya and Laporello donned their coats and grabbed their bags and greeted their siblings at the door. "We have to go now!" they said. Araluen exclaimed "Oh no really?!" before they admitted that it was a joke. A pointed joke that I think may fall on deaf ears.
We also learned that Mr NQN's siblings are raising a generation of pranksters. Jett's cousin Aura (Araluen's teen, who identifies as gender neutral) switched key words on Araluen's phone to swear words and Ben's name to the poop emoji!
So tell me Dear Reader, what is the longest you would wait for someone with fondue bubbling away? Are you much of a prankster?
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