Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella Frosting

All signs point to Fall. My nephew started Senior Kindegarten yesterday, the Pumpkin Spice Latte is back at Starbucks, and TIFF starts this week.  I am actually super excited for Fall this year, and to get back into cooking dinners. I hate turning on the oven/standing over the stove when it’s 45 out with the humidity, and as a result, didn’t cook much this summer. There were a lot of dinners that consisted mostly of cheese and crackers, hummus and pita, or that one time back in June when I made Homemade Pesto and tossed it with a variety of carbs (pasta! potatoes! bread!). I’m looking forward to apple picking and baking with cinnamon and pumpkin, but I have a backlog of my last few summer baking projects and one delicious Emmy feast to blog about first.

To kick it off, here are Kristine’s birthday cupcakes. I previously made cupcakes off of Ming Makes Cupcakes that were amazing, and gave another recipe a try. I would say that the Espresso Fudge Cupcakes trump the Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes, but if you have a Nutella fan in your life, you have to try the Nutella Frosting. Weirdly, I’m not a huge Nutella fan, and as the recipe only called for a half cup of it, I decided to use the rest of the jar I bought to fill the cupcakes. Once the cupcakes were completely cool, I carved out the middles and scooped Nutella in. I had also met Sandra for dinner earlier in the week, and she brought me some Lindt bars from the chocolate closet, one of which was a huge Milk Chocolate Hazelnut. I cut it up into triangles and stuck them on the top to finish these off.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella Frosting

Source: Ming Makes Cupcakes 

Ingredients:

Cupcakes

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature

1/2 cup sour cream

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

Nutella Frosting

1/2 cup Nutella

1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sifted

5 tbsp heavy cream

+ extra Nutella for filling

Directions:

1. Mix flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Add butter, sour cream, egg and vanilla, and beat until well-blended and fluffy. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely.
2. Use a small sharp knife to carve out the middle of the cupcakes.  Fill with Nutella.
3. For frosting, beat ingredients together until smooth and fluffy. Spread on top of cupcakes.