I use to be the pickiest eater...

... but after meeting Matt, I ever really had a choice. He introduced me to the awesomeness that is coffee, avocado/guacamole, mustard, scallops, etc. One of the most awesome introductions was to chocolate hazelnut spread, most popularly, Nutella.

Enter: Gooey Chocolate & Hazelnut Cupcakes. The story goes, Matt came to visit this weekend and I wanted to bake some cupcakes. Since Matt isn't the biggest sweets eater, I let him pick which cupcakes I ake when he's around. Not too surpising he chose the Gooey Chocolate & Hazelnut cupcakes from Cupcake Heaven.

Maddie became really impatient waiting for me to get baking, so impatient even, she decided she would let me know with a meow.

                                                

Essentially with the recipe you create your own chocolate hazelnut batter. The recipe calls for ground blanched hazelnuts, but of course blanched hazelnuts did not exist at Whole Foods. And of course I don't have a grinder. So I chopped the non-blanched hazelnuts that I bought. Then I chopped some more. Then I chopped a little bit more. I'm sure it wasn't the 'ground' texture it was supposed to be, however Matt likes crunchy peanut butter, so I figured it'd be ok.

While I was chopping, Maddie and Matt, well mostly Matt, were helping put the cupcake wrappers in the pan.

Once the batter is ready, you spoon about half of it into the cups. You put a spoonful of hazelnut spread on top. Of course, we used crunchy hazelnut spread (this can be found at Cost Plus World Market). You then spoon the other half of the batter on top of that. Finally, once the cupcakes are baked and cooled, you frost with home made chocolate frosting. The frosting is made by heating up whole whipping cream and mixing the heated cream with chunks of bittersweet chocolate. After the mixture cools, it's chocolate frosting! We were supposed to top with more hazelnuts...but we decided to forego that step.

Finally, the cupcakes were ready to eat! Contrary to how it may appear, Maddie was satisfied to only eat the crumbs that came from taking the paper cup off of the cupcake.