Nutella Buttons - TWD: Baking Chez Moi

Another in my sporadic installments of Tuesdays with Dorie - Baking Chez Moi. The recipe is Nutella Buttons.

These are mini cupcakes with a dollop of Nutella in the middle - a simple concept, and very easy to do.   Everyone really enjoyed them!

The method to prepare the batter was rather different from what I've done before -  interesting to try a different method, after all the various ones I've already seen. It seems like there are an infinite number of ways to make a cake batter.

You whisk the egg yolks, and then add the mixture of dry ingredients to that, to form a kind of paste.  This recipe calls for confectioners sugar - I'm wondering if that helps to make the grain of the cake finer.  The next step is to add melted butter to the paste, and then beat it.  Next you beat the egg whites until they hold peaks, and fold a small quantity of that into the batter to loosen it, followed by folding the rest of the beaten whites in.

I baked them in foil mini-muffin cups.  You put a small quantity of batter in each one, followed by a 1/2 teaspoon of Nutella, topped with additional batter.  Bake them on a baking sheet, and that's it.  Time to pop them addictively into your mouth ;-)  We were so busy eating, I neglected to take a photo of what they look like on the inside.

I find Nutella a bit too sweet, so I used a chocolate/hazelnut spread from our local health food store - slightly thicker and less sweet.   I also dipped the top in chocolate ganache (one of Dorie's "Bonne Idée" sidebar suggestions) and that made them extra yummy.