Swirled Nutella Muffins

These fluffy Nutella muffins are studded with white chocolate chips and swirled with a Nutella cream cheese mixture, then sprinkled with sugar.  

This recipe re-posted from January 28, 2016.  I’ll be back on Monday with a new recipe & a new post, but I’m taking this week to spend time with my relatives after a sudden death in the family.

I have an arrangement with my family that usually works out nicely.

It goes something like this: They bring me fresh brown eggs from their chickens as I need them (and I need them often, though the hens have gotten a little lazy with egg production in this cold weather), and I create copious amounts of desserts, sweets, and nutella muffins for them to promptly remove from my house to taste-test and devour.

This really isn’t so much an arrangement as it is a win-win situation for me, because if my family didn’t take away all of my baking, I would eat all of it (no self control whatsoever) to the point where I no longer fit out of my own doorway.  And I really, really don’t want that to happen.

Fortunately, they typically are happy to pick up my desserts with enthusiasm, often even snatching up and consuming even the sloppiest recipe failures before I can snap them into the trashcan (they don’t discriminate much when it comes to desserts).

But this weekend, they failed me.

That’s a bit dramatic, and definitely unfair.  My family was snowed in at the end of a long stretch of driveway that was covered in over 30 inches of snow, located down the icy curves of some pretty ill-tended back roads.

But being snowed in myself, I was left to the mercy of the baked goods I’d concocted during the snowstorm, the most tempting of all being these seductively swirled, Nutella muffins.  With fluffy, white-chocolate studded bases and sweet sugar-sanded tops, they were utterly irresistible, I just wanted to pluck the tops off of each and eat them, one by one.

They’re incredibly inviting, emanating warmth and coziness from where they sit snug in their paper coats with their sweetly sprinkled toppings and homely-yet-lovely chocolate hazelnut swirls.

I chose to concentrate the Nutella to the top of the muffin for a greater concentration of flavor (because everyone knows that the muffin tops are the best part of the muffin, anyway) but the rest of the muffin is studded with white chocolate chips (or not, depending on your preference) for an extra touch of sweetness.

When I finally made it out of the house and into work Monday, I brought the Nutella muffins that Zach and I hadn’t devoured to work with me for my co-workers to consume.  And consume them they did, the muffins were gone in minutes.

Enjoy!

5 from 1 vote

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Nutella Swirl Muffins

Nutella muffins -- soft fluffy muffins with a sweet Nutella swirl

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Total Time 40 minutes

Servings 12 muffins

Calories 445 kcal

Author Samantha Merritt

Ingredients

Swirl

• 8 oz cream cheese softened
• 2/3 cup Nutella
• 1/3 cup sugar granulated
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Muffin

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup canola oil can substitute vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup buttermilk or 1/2 cup milk mixed with 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice or vinegar and allowed to sit for at least 5 minutes
• 2 eggs lightly beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup white chocolate chips optional
• Turbinado sugar for sprinkling or regular granulated, optional

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line cupcake pan with paper liners (or grease/spray with baking spray)

2. In medium-sized, microwave safe bowl, combine cream cheese and Nutella and microwave at 10 second increments until the two can easily be stirred together (do not exceed 30 seconds).

3. Stir together cream cheese and Nutella and then stir in sugar.

4. Add egg yolk and vanilla and stir until combined. Set aside.
5. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
6. In another bowl, combine canola oil, sugar, buttermilk, eggs and vanilla extract, stirring until well-combined.
7. Add flour mixture to canola oil mixture and stir until just combined (do not over-mix!). Stir in white chocolate chips, if using.

8. Fill muffin cups 1/2-way full with muffin batter. Top with 1 1/2 - 2 Tbsp of Nutella mixture and then top with another spoonful of muffin batter so that muffin cups are about 3/4 full.

9. Use a butter knife or toothpick to swirl the Nutella with the spoonful of muffin batter added to the top.

10. Sprinkle with turbinado (or regular) sugar and then bake for 25-30 minutes (until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean or with few crumbs) and allow muffins to cool before enjoying.

Nutrition Facts

Nutella Swirl Muffins

Amount Per Serving

Calories 445

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

In a muffin mood?  You might also like these Cream Cheese Blueberry Muffins:

Or these Peanut Butter Filled Chocolate Muffins

Or for something sweeter, try these Mini Nutella Cupcakes, topped with Marshmallow Buttercream!

Originally posted 1/28/16 — updated 1/4/17