Nutella Swirl Bundt Cake

For Christmas this year, one of the gifts my parents got me was a bundt pan! I've been wanting one for awhile, and saving up recipes for when I finally got one. I also did a little pinterest hunting for more recipes too so that I could get as much out of the pan as possible!

And with my lifelong love of Nutella, I stumbled across a Nutella Swirl Bundt Cake, and that sprang to the top of my baking list! Now mine was baked in a 10 cup bundt pan. The recipe I had was for a 6 cup one, so I did 1.5 of the recipe for 9 cups of batter. However, the one problem with this was that it didn't quite fill my pan the way it would have had it been the better amount of batter, but what can you do? So if you have a 6 cup or 12 cup, just do the math accordingly!

Start with 2 cups cake flour, 1.5 tsp baking powder, and a pinch of salt.

In your electric mixer, beat 12 tablespoons softened butter with 1.5 cup sugar. You'll want to beat it for about three minutes under it's nice and fluffy.

Then after scraping down the bowl, add 1.5 tsp vanilla extract.

And three large eggs, one at a time, mixing for about 20 seconds between each addition.

You'll then add 3/4 cup milk and the flour into the batter. You'll want to alternate...starting with milk and ending with flour, and divide everything into thirds to make sure it's all well incorporated.

Now to create the Nutella swirl part of the cake!

You'll want to mix about 1/2 a cup of Nutella (I guestimated whether or not that was 1/2 a cup) with one egg to loosen up the nutella so it's easy to combine with some batter.

You'll then want to mix about 1/3 of your cake batter with the Nutella/egg mixture. I accidentally poured too much in with the Nutella, but oh well, that just means the Nutella section was bigger!

Then after spraying your pan with Baking Joy so it'll be easy to pop the cake out in the end, you'll layer a section of plain batter, then Nutella batter, and then the last of the plain batter.

And then take a knife and create the swirl!

You'll want to bake it at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes (until a knife stuck in the cake comes out clean) and cool it in the pan for 15 minutes before popping it out and letting it finish cooling on a rack!

I didn't get a good angle of it, but my cake puffed up kind of funny on the "bottom" part, so it looked a little like a UFO!

Mmmm just look at that swirl! I brought some to some of my friends, and then took the rest of the cake to work. I take the fact that it all pretty much disappeared by 10 in the morning as a good sign that it was delicious to people other than me!

Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yes. You read that heading correctly. NUTELLA CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES. My mouth waters at the words.

As much as I love baking with apple butter as a star ingredient (bars, pies, breads, etc.) I'm pretty sure that Nutella is THE best special ingredient you can use to bake. There is just something about that creamy chocolate hazelnut spread that smells/tastes/looks amazing. I never realized how much I could do when it came to baking with Nutella. I've made Nutella Swirl Pound Cake, Nutella mini-brownies, and now, Nutella chocolate chip cookies (and I've saved a handful of other Nutella recipes to try in the future).

I've been having a serious craving for some homemade chocolate chip cookies because they're so much better than the kind you buy in the store. So when I saw this recipe, I knew I had to try it, and as the smell from the oven wafts through my apartment, I'm pretty sure that was a great decision. It's a very simple recipe with few ingredients, and all ones that I had on hand.

You start with 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, and 1/2 tsp salt. Set it aside.

Cream 1 stick of room temperature butter (8tbsp), 1 cup sugar, and 1/2 cup brown sugar.

Once that is smooth and creamy, add two eggs and 1 1/2 tsp vanilla and mix until completely incorporated.

Then you mix in the flour mixture. I mixed about half of the mixture in first, and then once that's all incorporated, I mixed in the second half. This made sure that there were no flour pockets...or flour going all over my kitchen.

Now, in the past, when cookie dough was slightly dry, I just took it as it was and assumed that's how it was supposed to be. Obviously, I have consistently been wrong, so this time I decided to try something I had read online. I ended up mixing in a little less than 1/4 cup of water into the dough. This was perfect and got it to a nice consistency that I knew would spread how I wanted it to.

Then I added in a heaping 1/4 cup of Nutella, and mix it in for just a few seconds until there's Nutella streaks throughout the dough.

The final step is to add 1 1/2 cup chocolate chips. Mmm. More chocolate!

After putting the dough in heaping tablespoons onto the baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes at 375 degrees.

And then you have yummy delicious sweet Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies!