Strawberry cupcakes with Nutella cream cheese frosting.

Question. What do you do when you have left over whipped Nutella buttercream??

If you answered, eat it directly from from the bowl with a spoon, I completely agree with you. That’s what I really wanted to do. But sadly, I decided to be a grown up and make some more cupcakes and use up the left over frosting. The result was STUNNING! (even if I do say so myself)

As it was a Sunday afternoon and I wearing my comfy around the house clothes and my kitchen looked like a bomb had hit after making my first batch of cupcakes for the day, I really didnt want to venture out to the shops to get more ingredients. So I had a rummage through my fridge and cupboard and decided I had enough ingredients to make some strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. To give them the ‘wow’ factor I decided to swirl the Nutella frosting with the cream cheese frosting – Genius 🙂

As it was too late to use my usual usual oil based cupcake recipe as the batter needs to be made the night before, I sorted through my massive pile of recipes I have printed out over the years and found an oil based vanilla recipe that I thought would work. Sadly I have NO idea where the original recipe came from. I have tweaked it somewhat though 🙂

 

Strawberry Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of flour

2 tsp of baking powder

3/4 cup of caster sugar

pinch of salt

1/2 cup of milk

1/2 cup of oil

1 tsp of vanilla extract

2 eggs

1/2 cup of chopped strawberries (i used fresh)

 

Method

Pre heat oven to 180C (fan forced) and line your cupcake or muffin tray with cases

In a medium bowl sift the flour and baking powder. Add the sugar and salt (you only need a pinch but don’t forget to add it!) and whisk together.

In a small bowl or jug add all of the wet ingredients, oil, milk, eggs and vanilla extract, whisk gently until combined.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix with a whisk until combined and you have no lumpps.

Stir through the strawberries.

Fill your cupcakes cases around 3/4 full allowing room for the cupcakes to rise.

Bake for 15-18mins. I always turn my cupcake trays about half way through the baking time as my oven has hot and cold spots. You know your cupcakes are cooked if a skewer comes out clean.

Cream Cheese frosting

Ingredients

80g butter

250g of cream cheese

2 cups of icing sugar

1 – 2 tablespoons of cream

 

Method

Using a stand mixer beat the butter until it is smooth and creamy. The butter needs to be at room temperature, not melted or not straight from the fridge. Add in small amounts of cream cheese at a time and beat until combined. Just like the butter, make sure your cream cheese is room temp.

Add in small amounts of sifted icing sugar at a time until its all combined. ALWAYS start your mixture on slow when you add the icing sugar, or you will have icing sugar all over your kitchen – trust me 😛

Add in the cream you may only need/want to add 1 tablespoon it’s entirely up to you and what texture you like your frosting.

Beat for a good few minutes until its super light and fluffy. You can use a hand mixer but trust me its SOO much easier in a stand mixer. I had my frosting beating away while I folded the washing and did the dishes. By the time I was done the frosting was sooooo soft and fluffy.

A few things. I NEVER like NEVER use margarine in buttercream/cream cheese frosting (don’t hate me its just my opinion) I find that margarine doesn’t taste anywhere near as good and I find that it doesn’t ‘fluff’ up as well. I normally use milk in my frosting even if the recipe says cream, this time I used cream as I had some in the fridge left over and let me tell you, it makes a MASSIVE difference. Not so much taste wise, but it definitely makes the texture a lot lighter and so much more fluffy. As far as I’m concerned the lighter and fluffier the frosting, the better 🙂

To get the swirl, put your cream cheese in one piping bag and the Nutella frosting in the other and cut the ends off. Place the two piping bags into a larger one with your chosen nozzle on the end.

I took half of the Nutella cupcakes and half of these to work and so did Ben and they received rave reviews from both of our work places. Ben’s work mates are already asking when I’m going to make more and one of the guys at work tried the cupcakes and told me they were heart stoppingly good. 🙂 Love it.

 

Happy baking 🙂