Marbled Cupcakes with Hazelnut Filling

For my one of my Dad's 50th birthday presents, I made him some fancy chocolate cupcakes. They are a chocoholic's idea of heaven, with the cake being a marbled mix of vanilla and chocolate sponge, with a gooey hazelnut chocolate core and chocolate butter cream icing on the top. These are so soft and gooey, and I should warn, incredibly more-ish. The recipe makes about 12 cupcakes. Chocolate overload?

Recipe

• 100g plain flour
• 20g cocoa powder
• 40g margarine
• 120ml milk (I used skimmed)
• 1 egg
• 140g caster sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 120g chocolate and hazelnut spread (I used Asda Smart Price as it tastes identical to Nutella)

Preheat the oven to 170ºc and prepare some cupcake cases.

Mix together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt, baking powder and margarine in a food processor.

Gradually pour in the milk bit by bit and mix well, then add the egg and mix again.

Fill the cases up to 2/3 full with the mixture and bake for 20 minutes.

When done and cooled, using a small knife cut out the middle of each cake and fill them with a spoonful of chocolate spread, then put the cut out piece of cake back on top and push down gently.

For the butter cream frosting I used 250g icing sugar, 80g margarine, 25ml milk, a few big spoonfuls of chocolate spread and around 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder. To decorate, I sprinkled over some chopped hazelnuts.

Happy baking!