Nutella banana bread cupcakes

Nutella banana bread - one of the best combinations. The Nutella stays thick and makes your banana bread even more moist!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, and some for greasing the pan

• 2 cups all purpose flour, plus 2 more tbsp for flourishing the pan

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 3/4 tsp salt

• 4 ripe bananas, mashed

• 2/3 cup granulated sugar

• 1 tsp cinnamon

• 1/4 cup sour cream (see note 1)

• 2 eggs

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1/2 cup nutella

• 1/3 cup walnuts, chopped

Directions

1. Heat oven to 180c/350f. Butter and flour a 12-cupcake tray

2. Stir the flour, baking soda and salt together in a medium sized bowl

3. Brown the butter: melt butter in a light-colored saucepan over medium heat. Cook the butter, stirring occasionally, and scraping the bottom and the sides of the pan. Continue until the butter is a deep golden brown and smells nutty. Make sure you don't step away from the pan during this process because the butter can get burnt very easily. Transfer the butter to a large mixing bowl and set to aside to cool

4. When the butter has cooled, add the mashed bananas, sugar, yogurt, eggs, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and walnuts.

5. Stir until well combined, then add the flour and stir again until combined. Try not to over mix (see note 2).

6. Fill half the cupcake tin with batter, spread evenly with a spatula. Then spoon a dollop of Nutella and drop it on the batter, use a tooth pick to swirl it in. Then fill the cupcake tin with a bit more batter, and add another small dollop of Nutella, swirl in again. Repeat for the remaining 11 cupcake tins (see note 3)

7. Bake cupcakes for 25-30 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean (you may see some Nutella, thats okay)

--Notes--

• Note 1: you can substitute sour cream with Greek yogurt (use 1/4 cup Greek yogurt)

• Note 2: you want to avoid over-mixing because if you over mix the batter it will lead to too much gluten development and you end up with a chewy/rubber banana bread. You also want to avoid breaking up the banana too much so you have "chunks of banana" in your batter.

• Note 3: you also want to avoid mixing in the Nutella too much because you want a "marble effect"- see picture attached below.

Adapted from: Nutella banana bread by Yosef Arefi https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019019-nutella-banana-bread