I recently discovered my old diary from 1992-1994. I was in 8th grade around that time. As I read through every entry, I was blown away; I couldn’t believe I wrote the things I did! Continue reading
It’s that special day of the year again, when people around the world unite to share their love for Nutella – that’s right, it’s World Nutella Day! Continue reading
In Sydney, we are currently experiencing a heat wave; it is just dreadful. We don’t have air-conditioning, so our Nutella is lot softer than it should be; I can’t complain about that though, because during winter, the Nutella gets so firm that I have to put it in the microwave to become spreadable! Continue reading
I have always been intrigued, fascinated and mystified when it comes to French macarons. I believe I first saw them on Flickr, in an array of colors and flavors. Continue reading
As you may know, February 5 was World Nutella Day. I submitted my entry, a fried Nutella and banana sandwich with cinnamon sugar crust, but a comment on that entry inspired me to make a Nutella fruit dip. Continue reading
When was the first time you heard of Nutella and tasted it for yourself? For me, it was 1995. My foreign language class was planning a “field trip” to Spain and France for spring break of that year. I was one of the lucky few whose parents allowed me to go. A friend of mine told me that I just had to buy some Nutella while I was overseas. I had to ask her what it was and she explained it was a sort of sandwich spread that was made with chocolate and hazelnuts. I told her it sounded great and I would buy some.
While in France I did find some, and purchased it to bring home. The funny thing is, after I tasted it, I didn’t like it! I also thought it was strange to put chocolate on bread. So I don’t think I even finished the small jar of it that I had brought home.
Years later, and I do mean years later, after I moved to Australia, I noticed that Nutella was plentiful in all the grocery stores. I decided to try it again, because it sure did look nice, so maybe my tastes had changed over the years. Luckily for my tastebuds, I loved it! Unlucky for my waistline, however! Nutella has nearly been a staple in our household since then.
I’ve tried plenty of my own Nutella creations in the past, including my popular peanut butter and Nutella swirl cookies, and Nutella-coffee frosting.
This is my second year submitting to World Nutella Day; this year I made a variation of the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.
It’s a fried Nutella and banana sandwich with a cinnamon-sugar crust. This has already had mixed reactions. Some love the idea, some hate the idea and think it’s disgusting. Someone even suggested that instead of frying the bread, to toast it in the toaster.
If I’m going to eat a banana with Nutella, I usually just spread a layer of Nutella on a naked banana, slice it into rounds, then eat it. I’ve even eaten a plain un-fried Nutella and banana sandwich. But, as I thought with the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich, the extra step of frying it brings a new depth to the taste.
Now, I wouldn’t go and make one of these sandwiches every day, but it does make a nice treat once in a while!
The recipe is below, but please note that I just estimated the amounts of what I used. This is a recipe where you can use however much (or less) of anything that you like!
Nutella & Banana Sandwich With Cinnamon-Sugar Crust
serves 1Ingredients
2 slices wholemeal bread, or bread of your choice
Approximately 1/2 teaspoon butter
Cinnamon-sugar, you can buy this at the store or make it yourself
1 ripe banana
Approximately 1 tablespoon Nutella, or similarDirections
Heat a skillet over low-medium heat. Meanwhile, spread a thin layer of butter on one side of each slice of bread. Sprinkle a good amount of cinnamon-sugar on the buttered side of each slice.Slice the banana into enough rounds so that you can layer the unbuttered side of one slice of bread with the rounds. Spread Nutella on the unbuttered side of the other slice of bread.
Carefully place the bread with the bananas, buttered side down, into the skillet. Immediately place the other slice of bread, Nutella side down, right on top of the bananas.
Fry until golden brown, then flip the sandwich over and fry until golden brown. Keep your eye on it, it can burn easily!
Let cool, slice diagonally if you like, and enjoy!
So what are you waiting for? Go celebrate World Nutella Day!
See Ms Adventures In Italy, Bleeding Espresso and World Nutella Day for more information.
This is just a very short post about combining two of my favorite spreads – peanut butter and Nutella. If you’re a frequent visitor, or if you just have a look through the archives, you’ll see that I’ve tried to combine these two spreads a couple of times in cookies, my favorite one having been the peanut butter cookies with swirls of Nutella.
I have a new favorite now, though. It’s the peanut butter sandwich cookie filled with plain Nutella.
The directions are simple. Bake your favorite peanut butter cookies (in my case I used this flourless peanut butter cookie recipe), take two of the cookies, spread plain Nutella on one cookie and top it with the other cookie. Then eat!
These flourless peanut butter cookies are actually quite delicate, so it took some gentle spreading maneuvers with the Nutella to not break the cookie. But these are, by far, my favorite peanut butter cookies so I had to use them!
This is going to be a 2-in-1 cupcake post! I was going to post a recipe for mixed berry tea, but quite a few people have expressed interest in both of these cupcakes, so I decided I’d go ahead and post the recipes for them instead.
The first cupcakes I’d like to absolutely rave about are these peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate glaze from I Heart Cuppycakes.
These are amazing! I’ve been reluctant to make peanut butter cupcakes because I thought that the peanut butter might make the cake heavy or dense. But these cupcakes are so incredibly moist and soft and so full of rich peanut butter flavor! I was blown away, this is one awesome cupcake!
This will definitely not be the last time I make these. If you love peanut butter and chocolate, I highly recommend you bake a batch of these right now! And make sure you have a tall glass of milk to go with them!
Now for the second cupcake. The peanut butter cupcakes got me thinking about Nutella cupcakes. Nutella can often be substituted for peanut butter in recipes, so I decided to give it a go with these cupcakes. I used the same amount of Nutella, but I did decrease the sugar by about 1/4 cup because Nutella is much sweeter than peanut butter. I did everything else the same as for the peanut butter cupcakes.
What I found was that the Nutella cupcakes sank slightly in the middle when they were done baking. They seemed to rise higher as well, so next time I wouldn’t use a full 1/4 cup of batter in each liner; my Nutella cupcakes overflowed a little bit!
But, the cake did taste of Nutella and still came out very moist and soft.
I wasn’t sure of the type of frosting to use on Nutella cupcakes. I didn’t really want to use more Nutella in case it ended up being a bit too much. A friend suggested marshmallow frosting, which sounded like a winning combination! I guess sort of like a fluffernutter cupcake, only with Nutella instead of peanut butter!
To finish off the Nutella cupcake, I spooned a dollop (or about a teaspoon) of fresh Nutella into the middle of the top of the cupcake and frosted them with marshmallowy Swiss meringue from the queen of Swiss meringues at How To Eat A Cupcake. This frosting is definitely a keeper, it was fantastic!
The Nutella cupcake is quite sweet, but a flavor combination I haven’t yet experienced. Next time I probably wouldn’t use so much frosting on each cupcake, but instead just spread a light layer on top.
What kind of frosting would you like on a Nutella cupcake, just out of curiosity?
This month’s Iron Cupcake: Earth challenge has been pretty hard for me. See, I love coffee and normally have two cups a day. The problem is though, that since becoming pregnant I don’t like coffee anymore! It’s really crazy. Through all my three pregnancies I have had at least one strong food aversion with each one – 1) eggs; 2) pepperoni; 3) coffee. But since I didn’t enter last month’s Iron Cupcake: Earth challenge, I tried to overcome my coffee aversion to make a hazelnut mocha cupcake.
The cupcake is a mocha cupcake, made with strong coffee and a scattering of ground coffee. It is filled with straight Nutella. The frosting is my Nutella coffee frosting that has been featured at Cupcakes Take The Cake. The cupcake is finished off with a hazelnut, dipped in chocolate by my own self.
Do these taste like a hazelnut mocha? They do. A very rich hazelnut mocha! The Nutella filling may have been a bit much. The coffee taste isn’t very strong in the cupcake, and you cannot feel the crunchiness of the ground coffee. The strongest coffee taste comes from the frosting, which smells absolutely gorgeous. The cupcake itself is just a teensy bit dry, but very chocolatey.
Our February ETSY PRIZE-PACK is from artists:
As an added bonus for February, SWEET CUPPIN CAKES BAKERY AND CUPCAKERY SUPPLY will be tossing in a variety of cupcaking supplies, http://www.acupcakery.com/index.html.
Last and certainly not least, don’t forget our corporate prize providers: HEAD CHEFS by FIESTA PRODUCTS,http://www.fiestaproducts.com, HELLO CUPCAKE by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson, http://blog.hellocupcakebook.com, JESSIE STEELE APRONS http://www.jessiesteele.com; TASTE OF HOME books, http://www.tasteofhome.com; a t-shirt from UPWITHCUPCAKES.COM http://www.upwithcupcakes.com/. Iron Cupcake:Earth is sponsored in part by 1-800-Flowers,http://www.1800flowers.com.
Now, on to the recipes.
View printable PDF recipes
Mocha Cupcakes
makes 12Ingredients:
2 eggs
1/2 cup cold brewed coffee
1/2 cup canola oil
3 teaspoons cider vinegar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup baking cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground coffeeMethod:
In a large bowl, beat the eggs, coffee, oil, vinegar and vanilla until well blended. In a small bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into coffee mixture until blended.Fill paper-lined muffin cups three-fourths full. Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack to cool.
Nutella Coffee Frosting
makes enough to frost 12 cupcakesIngredients:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
4 tablespoons Nutella
3 cups powdered sugar
2-4 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons instant coffee granules
1 teaspoon vanillaMethod:
In a small bowl, combine 1 tablespoon milk with 1 teaspoon instant coffee and stir until coffee is dissolved. It may help to dissolve the coffee if you warm the milk in the microwave, just be sure to cool it off afterwards in the fridge before adding to the frosting.In a separate bowl, combine butter, Nutella, powdered sugar, vanilla, and the 2 tablespoons coffee-milk mixture. Mix well with electric mixer, adding more milk as needed to make a fluffy spreadable/pipeable frosting.
Updated the next day: I just had one of these cupcakes without the Nutella filling and I enjoyed it much more. The Nutella filling was just a bit too much for me. I’d recommend that if you make these to not fill them with Nutella, but ultimately that choice is up to you! :)
If you’re a cupcake lover and you haven’t picked up a copy of February’s issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine, you must do so now! There are so many cupcakes in that magazine! This post is not about cupcakes though, it’s about crepes, which you can find an article on in said magazine. The article describes in detail the process of making crepes and encourages the reader by saying that making crepes is easy. I got inspired and decided to try it right away – on the menu, Nutella crepes.
And was it easy? YES! It was the quite possibly the easiest thing I’ve ever cooked! The only hard part was spreading the Nutella on the crepes, but once the Nutella melted a bit it became easier.
You can find the entire article from the magazine online at the Martha Stewart website, along with the exact recipe that I used here (I divided the recipe into thirds, and made the smaller crepes).
I’m really impressed with these and would like to try a savory crepe in the coming days; I’m thinking ham and cheese.
Side note – Yes, I realize I haven’t made cupcakes in a while. That is soon to be remedied; I will be making Valentine’s Day cupcakes, and I will be entering this month’s Iron Cupcake: Earth challenge.