Banana Muffins with Nutella surprise

It's quite an eventful day for me today. Met up with my girlfriends this morning for breakfast at Village Park for their all famous Nasi Lemak. Had a wonderful time chit chatting with them as usual. I even discovered a yummy Roast Pork Rice store nearby my place! Yes, those that almost melt in your mouth....so good! Late in the afternoon, I met up with another 2 neighbor friends to do some baking too. We made Rocky Road Bars, it's a delicious treat with cookies, cherries, roasted peanuts and marshmallows coated generously with chocolate...sounds good right? It taste good too! Well I guess that will be another post. ;) But one thing is for sure, I am so happy to find some more baking buddies to share and discover new recipes together. ;) More on that later....

After cooking dinner, I still managed to squeeze out a little time to bake some cupcakes for my girls' snack. I wanted to make something real simple and also to use up the sour cream & banana in my pantry. And hence this Banana cupcakes with Nutella surprise.
I got this recipe from Bakin' And Eggs, another great food site that I discovered recently. The recipe is pretty simple and I got everything I need to make it, so game on! Note that I have reduce the sugar by 20g and also using 1 banana less, hoping that the cupcake won't be too sweet. :) So here's my version:

Ingredients for Banana Cupcakes With Nutella Surprise:
220g all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
100g caster sugar
90g light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 very ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup light cour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
50g unsalted butter, room temp
about 3/4 cup Nutella

Method:

• Sieve flour, baking powder, salt together and set aside. Combine mashed banana and sour cream together.
• Cream together butter and both sugars till light and fluffy.
• Add one egg at a time and till well corporated then add the other egg. After well combined, add vanilla extract.
• Add mashed banana mixture, then follow by flour mixture. Stir till just combine.
• Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line the muffin tray with cupcake liners.
• Scoop enough batter into the cupcake liners to fill 1/4 full. Then spoon about 1 tsp of Nutella into the center. Lastly, scoop more cake batter to cover up the Nutella, filling the cupcake liners up to 3/4 full.
• Bake in the oven for 18 to 22 minutes till golden brown or tester comes out clean.

The cake is soft and it's a good combo with the chocolate. But perhaps I have been too generous and spoon too much Nutella into the middle, the cupcake is still a little too sweet to my liking. ;0 I guess the next time round, I would opt for dark chocolate instead. ;)

And guess what, while I was at my friend's place making Rocky Road Bars, one of my friend, Reese has generously made these delicious pumpkin "Ang Gu Kuih" for us! Lucky me! Another kind of my favorite nyona kuih! According to Reese, pumpkin paste has been added into the skin dough and thus the yellow colored skin and the filling is the usual mung bean paste....delicious! No worries, I will learn from the master and hopefully be able to make some myself soon. ;)

Overall, I had a wonderful time today with all my friends. And I feel really fortunate to have all these great friends around me. Hope I will be able to have more great times like these to come! Thanks dear friends! So....when are we meeting again harr??