Nutella Muffins
These Nutella muffins use the fluffiest and most tender vanilla muffins with tiny hazelnut bits and swirled with Nutella filling.
What Makes These Nutella Muffins so Good?!
- They’re large and shareable (only if you want to share, of course!)
- They have a HUGE crispy muffin top, because let’s be honest, that’s the best part.
- Super fluffy and feels like the kind of texture you can’t just whip up on whim but now you can!!!
- Nutella swirls with a hazelnut crunch, mmm!!!!!
If you love fluffy muffins make sure to check out my Super Fluffy Blueberry Muffins, Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins, Chocolate Chip Muffins, or simply my BEST Vanilla Muffins.
What is Nutella?
Nutella is a popular brand of sweet, chocolate-hazelnut spread. It was first introduced in Italy and made primarily from sugar, palm oil, hazelnuts, cocoa powder, and skim milk powder. Nutella has a rich chocolate-hazelnut flavor that is very sweet and indulgent.
It combines the taste of chocolate with a pronounced nuttiness from the hazelnuts, resulting in a smooth and creamy spread enjoyed on its own or as a delicious addition to various foods such as muffins, cake, ice creams, etc.
Other brands of chocolate hazelnut spread, even homemade versions, can also be used for this recipe.
Like I said, nutella can be used in just about anything. Try it in my Nutella Cake, Ferrero Rocher Cake, Nutella Cupcakes, and my newest Nutella Ice Cream. You can definitely never go wrong when you think of nutella and dessert recipes!
Ingredients
- Flour: I use all-purpose flour in most of my recipes and I HIGHLY recommend using a digital scale, as flour is so often over measured.
- Baking Powder & Baking Soda: We’re going to need both here and a lot of them to get that gorgeous muffin top.
- Sugar: please don’t cut the sugar, it makes the texture more tender. I use just granulated sugar.
- Butter: I like to use salted butter but unsalted also works, just add a pinch of salt.
- Eggs: I use room temperature, large eggs. Place them in hot water for a few minutes if they’re cold.
- Greek Yogurt/Milk/Cream: I found my favorite combination to be half Greek yogurt and half heavy whipping cream. I know it’s unusual, most people don’t use cream in muffins but I promise it’s so good.
- If you don’t want to use cream and you want to use milk, I would sub the greek yogurt for sour cream. The higher fat content helps keep these muffins more tender and moist. That said, you can also do greek yogurt and milk for a slightly healthier option. They’ll be good, especially right away but they might dry out a little quicker.
- Vanilla: you can use either pure vanilla extract, vanilla bean paste, or artificial vanilla extract.
- Hazelnuts: I found store-bought peeled and chopped hazelnuts. If you get them whole, you’ll need to either boil or toast them and peel the skin off before chopping.
- I chop them finely for a nice little crunch with every bite!
- Nutella Spread: if you can’t find the Nutella brand, any brand of chocolate hazelnut spread will work.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Step 1: Whisk together the all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside.
Step 2: Mix butter and sugar in a large bowl, whisk together until well combined.
Step 3: Add one egg at a time to the butter-sugar mixture, whisking each egg until well combined and the mixture becomes pale and fluffy. Then add another egg, and so on.
Step 4: Add the Greek yogurt and vanilla and whisk until it’s smooth, then repeat with the room temperature heavy cream.
Step 5: Add the dry ingredients that you set aside and mix followed by the chopped hazelnuts mixing until evenly distributed.
Step 6: Rest the batter: Cover the bowl and let the batter rest at room temperature for 1 hour. This allows the gluten to relax and the leaveners to get a head start. (If you’re in a rush, 30 minutes is fine but definitely don’t go past 90 minutes or you’ll get a wonky bake).
Step 7: Fill the muffin pan with a small cookie scooper halfway and then add melted nutella before topping with another scoop of muffin batter and another swirl of nutella.
- Use a knife to gently swirl the nutella into the muffin batter.
Step 8: Bake for 5 minutes at 425 F and then reduce the oven temperature to 375 F, baking for another 13-15 minutes until the muffins are golden brown and spring back gently when pressed in the center.
Step 9: Remove and cool before serving
How to Make Muffins Fluffy?
Everyone loves and wants their muffins to be light and fluffy. Here are some things I found that help ensure yours will turn out that way!
- Use all-purpose flour and make sure to weigh it so you don’t over measure and make the muffins dry.
- Use fresh and active baking powder and baking soda. Use an acidic ingredient if baking soda is used, I use greek yogurt.
- When mixing the wet and dry ingredients avoid overmixing to prevent gluten development. Mix just until combined.
- Ensure room temperature ingredients (such as the cream and eggs) and always preheat the oven. Don’t open the oven door too soon during baking.
Frequently Asked Questions
Omg yes. What if you browned the butter (let it cool) and then made a chocolate ganache swirl and chopped pecans?! *drooling*
Or you can do a swirl of peanut butter instead of the nutella. Ok I haven’t tried that one but now definitely will!
Baked goods stay fresher when they’re frozen. Place muffins in an airtight container and then place the container in a freezer bag. Freeze for a few weeks. Bring back to room temperature before serving.
To get that gorgeous muffin top I increased the leavening agents a little more than usual. Allowing the batter to rest for an hour gives you the perfect bake but if you wait longer, the muffins will bake with a wonky, lop sided muffin top.
I haven’t tested this yet, but if you want to make the batter ahead of time, I would try skipping the baking soda.
How to Store These Nutella Muffins
I love a crispy muffin top but if you store these in an airtight container, you lose that crispiness. So I leave them out overnight and then after the first night, I store them in an airtight container or bag at room temperature for another 1-2 days.
You can refrigerate or freeze if it’s longer than a couple of days. I don’t like refrigerating because they dry out quicker so I freeze them and bring them back to room temperature before serving. Again, you’ll lose that crispy muffin top though.
Thanks so much for reading today’s post, if you have any questions just comment down below.
If you make these nutella muffins, I would love it if you left a star rating for it in the recipe card.
As always, have a blessed day and happy baking!
Love, B
Do you use kosher salt or table salt?
Sea salt
I made these tonight and they where absolutely perfect!! Only thing I did change was the butter to unsalted and just put a good pinch of slat in with the dry ingredients. 10/10 all round thank u for sharing x
Ahh Yayy so glad you liked them!! Thank you for the review 🙂