Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella Frosting

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
I hope that everyone is having a day full of flowers, candy, pink, chocolate, red, and love! I’m so looking forward to my Valentine’s Day date with my handsome husband tonight. It’s a chance to get dressed up, get out of the house (which is huge for me now that I’m working from home!), enjoy some good food and wine (I’m not going to lie, I may have already looked at the menu and decided what I’m ordering…two days ago…#fat kid), and just celebrate our love and our 5th Valentine’s Day together!
(In case you missed it, you can check out our love story here!)
In the meantime, my gift to you, sweet readers, is a super yummy recipe to show y’all just how much I love you…because nothing says love like Chocolate Cupcakes topped with Nutella Frosting!

I made these babies last weekend and I have to admit, they didn’t exactly come out perfectly at first and I was debating whether or not to share the recipe. However, I was able to salvage a few decent looking cupcakes and I thought I’d go ahead and share because most of the problems I had were not with the recipes themselves, but with my own mistakes/not paying attention to what I was doing. Go me.
First things first, chocolate cupcakes! I used a simple recipe I found on AllRecipes, and if I were making these again, I’d probably choose a different recipe as this one is for a cake and not for cupcakes (not that there’s that much of a difference, but I sometimes like my cake and cupcakes a little different). Two other tips for this recipe? Don’t replace the all-purpose flour with cake flour and don’t overfill the cupcake liners! (Seriously, you’ll be sad). So although I messed up this recipe a little bit, it does have a bunch of great reviews so I figured I’d go ahead and share it anyway. (But hit me up if you have any foolproof chocolate cake recipes because I’m in the market for one!)
One Bowl Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
2 cups white sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two nine inch round pans or put cupcake liners in muffin tins.
  2. In a large bowl, stir together the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla, mix for 2 minutes on medium speed of mixer. Stir in the boiling water last. Batter will be thin. Pour evenly into the prepared pans or cupcake liners.
  3. Bake 30 to 35 minutes for cake/15-20 mins for cupcakes in the preheated oven, until the cake tests done with a toothpick. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.              

After you’ve baked up a batch of chocolate cupcakes it’s time for my favorite part–frosting! I am so obsessed with Nutella. It’s one of the most delicious foods on Earth, hence putting it’s yummy flavor in frosting is an awesome idea. Unless you decide to make a half batch of the frosting, then halfway through making it you realized that you’ve forgotten to half some of the ingredients so you just say screw it and decide to make a full batch of frosting even though most of your cupcakes are a little bit messed up from overflowing in the oven. And then you don’t soften your butter enough and then your frosting doesn’t stiffen enough. Then it’s not so good. But I kept adding powdered sugar until I reached the right consistency, and I honestly think the recipe itself is really great. I’m just off my game in the kitchen some days. (I know it’s impossible to believe, but it’s true…ha.) I got the recipe from one of my absolute go-to baking blogs, My Baking Addiction, and I’m excited to try it again in the future. (Also, she filled her cupcakes with Nutella which I’m sure tastes amazing, but I decided not to go to such great lengths with my cupcakes this time!)

Nutella Buttercream Frosting

Recipe Source: My Baking Addiction

Ingredients:

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 13-ounce jar of Nutella
pinch of fine grain sea salt
1 tablespoon clear vanilla extract
2 pounds confectioners’ sugar, sifted
6-8 tablespoons heavy cream or milk

Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and Nutella until well combined. Slowly add in confectioner’s sugar, and continue creaming until well blended.
2. Add salt, vanilla, and 3 tablespoons of heavy cream or milk. Blend on low speed until moistened. Add an additional 3-5 tablespoons of heavy cream or milk until you reach the desired consistency. Beat at high speed until frosting is smooth and fluffy.

Notes:

– This recipe will make enough frosting to generously frost 24 cupcakes or one 9 inch layer cake.
– You can easily adjust the consistency of this recipe by simply adding in more heavy cream or milk.
– Covered and refrigerated frosting can be stored for up to three days. Simply bring it to room temperature and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. You may need to add a couple of teaspoons of heavy cream or milk to revive the consistency.
I decorated my cupcakes using my not at all fancy Wilton decorating kit that I got at the grocery store for like $7. And then I baked them in these adorable little zebra and hot pink cupcake liners that I think are just so much fun and perfect for Valentine’s Day!

My original plan was to use my little mini Valentine’s Day cookie cutters I found when we were unpacking and make little chocolate decorations for the tops of the cupcakes. I melted an entire bag of Nestle Dark Chocolate Chips in the microwave and then poured the melted chocolate into an 9×9 pan and let it chill in the fridge. When I went to cut out the chocolate shapes, they would NOT come out of the pan. So basically failure #3 of my Nutella cupcake making fiasco. However, I was bound and determined to make these chocolate shapes, so I let the pan come to room temperature and after much swearing fiddling, I was finally able to coax a few adorable letters out of the pan to put on top of my cupcakes. And although they’re not perfect, I think they’re pretty darn cute.

So although the finished product may look nice and pretty in the photo, it didn’t come without work. That’s another reason I wanted to wait and share them today. These cupcakes, they’re kind of like love. Sometimes things don’t always go as planned, sometimes you make mistakes, but if you keep trying, the results can be really really sweet.
Deep thoughts here on Valentine’s Day! 😉

So however you plan to celebrate today, I hope that it’s happy and full of love! Xoxo

PS: Would anyone like to do a guest post for me Monday of next week? If  you’re interested, send me an email at inthepinkandgreen{at}gmail.com with your name, a link to your blog, and what you’d like to talk about. (Preferably the sooner the better!) I’m probably going to be needing a few guest posters over the next couple of months, so even if you can’t do it Monday still reach out to me!
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