Yes, guilty as charged. I stayed up past 1 am to finish reading Breaking Dawn. The Twilight book series is finally over. It was bittersweet, those final moments with the book, with me in bed in a ratty old nightgown (Ross, it’s the white one your Lola made) and a flickering book light. So today finds me prowling the net for a vampiric fix for my fangirling, and these were “exactly my brand of heroin.” All these are on zazzle.com, designed by crazies like me (I’m too chicken to design anything myself!) (Those Twilight cupcakes are from Cupcakes Take The Cake.)

Which one’s your favorite?

I have to say, that last book made me squeamish. All that talk about sipping blood through a straw and half-vampire babies eating themselves out of wombs has cured me of the need to eat anything that breathes. I’ve been eating nothing but Skyflakes crackers, vegetables and fruit for the past three days now. Does this mean I’ll lose weight? Haha. Maybe, MAYBE this means I should go make a vegetarian quiche or something. Or when my stomach can take it, a tart with fresh blood oranges would be OME-lovely.

Hello, all! It feels good to be back. How has everyone been?

I’m jumping back onto the curly blogging highway with these NUTELLA cupcakes. These have a delicious ribbon of hazelnut goodness swirled into heavenly cake batter. When you bite into them, you get all the gooey Nutella scrumptiousness stuck to your teeth! I can’t even begin to describe how much I fell in love with these.

When I made these, I didn’t think I would ever blog about them. That’s because I have a secret: I keep good recipes to myself. (Insert evil laugh.) Especially the REALLY good ones that I’ve spent time kitchen-testing. I’m bad like that, heehee.

But you know, I am thankful for many things today: for writing my first post after three long weeks, for friends who helped me handle the all the overflowing “batter in my mixing bowl” when I was gone, for the fact that I’m racing home after work to finish reading Breaking Dawn (Toni! If you’re reading this, all I can say is, GAWD!!!) and for the month of August (my birthday month!).

I am overflowing with gratitude and can’t help but share the recipe for these yummy things. I first came across these from She Bakes & She Cooks, because I have an unabashed love for Nutella and was trying to find a baked good that used it on the net. These yield WONDERFUL cupcakes: the batter bakes up to a delicate crumb that’s a perfect backdrop for the rich hazelnut cream.

Nutella Cupcakes

10 tbsp butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
Nutella, approximately 1/3 cup (I used a mini cookie-dough scoop for each cupcake)

1) Preheat oven to 325F.

2) Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners.

3) Cream together butter and sugar until light, about 2 minutes.

4) Add in eggs one at a time, until fully incorporated.

5) Add vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until batter is uniform and no flour remains.

5) Using an ice cream scoop, fill each muffin liner with batter. They should be 3/4 full, if you’re not using a scoop.

6) Top each cake with 1 1/2 tsp Nutella. Swirl Nutella in with a toothpick, making sure to fold a bit of batter up over the nutella.

7) Bake for 20 minutes. Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

I hope you make these! They’re the perfect antidote to a blah afternoon–both to cook, and to eat!

I hope to make my way to everyone else’s neck of the world wide woods. Welcome back to me!