Can this be made "healthy"?

leahhugh

Meaning, lower in calories?! Maybe by substituting things in? I'm not good with substitutions and the measurements.

Any ideas? They look SO good!


(not sure if the picture worked, posting from iPhone)

http://www.pieknits.com/blog/2006/08/self_frosting_cupcakes.html

ORIGINAL RECIPE

10 tablespoons butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
Nutella, approx. 1/3 cup
Preheat oven to 325F. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners.
Cream together butter and sugar until light, about 2 minutes. Add in eggs on at a time, until fully incorporated. The batter may not look smooth, this is fine. Add vanilla.
Stir in flour, salt, and baking powder until batter is smooth and all flour is blended.
Using an ice cream scoop, fill each muffin liner with batter. Cups should be 3/4 full if you’re not using a scoop. Top each cake with 1 1/2 tsp Nutella. Swirl Nutella in with a toothpick, folding a little batter up and over the Nutella as well.
Bake for 20 minutes. Remove to wire rack and allow to cool. Makes 12.

qtiekiki

Sub half of the butter with applesauce (non-sweetened) and decrease the amount of sugar (how much you decrease depends on your taste buds, but I had tried cutting out half and not have an issue).

leahhugh

Ive never heard of subbing applesauce in for butter, interesting!

Nikiki

Ooohhh nutella cupcakes!!!

The applesauce for butter thing and reducing sugar as was said to cut calories and I also like adding things to up the nutritional value of snacks too, like subbing out a cup of the white flour for 1/2 cup of whole wheat and half a cup with oatmeal that has been powderized (technical term of course) along with adding in chia seeds (add a little more applesauce if you do the chia seeds, about equal parts will keep them moist) and/or nuts that way I feel more satiated after one cupcake and less likely to go back for another five!

Also instead of applesauce you can also sub out mashed banana or pumpkin purée for the butter, just make sure whatever you use has no added sugars, and keep some of the butter, the consistency will come out better than if you cut out all of it.

coliema

Ive never heard of subbing applesauce in for butter, interesting!

I have, you can also use it to replace eggs. I was making a cake with my sister once and we didn't have any eggs and we didn't realize it until after we starting mixing the cake batter up, so we called our Mom and she suggested applesauce in place of eggs. We did, and baked it....SUCH A DELICIOUS CAKE! It was so moist, and delicious. I use applesauce in my recipes a lot!

leahhugh

Awesome! I can make these delicious cupackes with less calories and more nutritional value! I have applesauce, whole wheat flour, and two mashed bananas! Do you just do exact sub for the applesauce? So if I did half butter half applesauce, I would use 5tbsp of each?

caraiselite

almond/coconut flour and stevia?

loadsandloads

bump for later....gotta try this for my grandson....he love nutella

dls06

Sub half of the butter with applesauce (non-sweetened) and decrease the amount of sugar (how much you decrease depends on your taste buds, but I had tried cutting out half and not have an issue).

This
or You could substitute Cocoa powder and pb2 for Nutella, pureed pumpkin works instead of oil too.

now_or_never12

Try subbing applesauce in place of the butter like others have said. A lot of the time I use only applesauce in place of butter. For a different taste (yes it sounds weird) but baby food also works in place of butter, oil or eggs.