World Nutella Day 2010….

YAY! It’s finally here – February 5th is World Nutella Day. Concieved as an excuse to eat Nutella guilt free and spread the word (pun intended) on its chocolate-y hazelnutty goodness, Michell Fabio at Bleeding Espresso and Sara Rosso at Ms. Adventures In Italy host this incredible event, exhorting followers to submit Nutella recipes, so we can share the resulting goodies the world over. A third cohort – Shelley Rhuele – formerly of At Home in Rome (a now defunct blog, but which is still online and is very much worth a read of the archives) was also a co-founder, but sadly she no longer participates as she no longer blogs from Italy, having moved back Stateside.

This is my first year actually making something for the event so I thought I’d start with something simple. I adapted a favorite banana bread recipe (courtesy of Family Circle) and came up with the following:

Nutella and Nutella Streusel-Topped Nutella Banana Bread

Now who among you isn’t drooling already? Anyone? Anyone?

Yes, Esther, I know you have been drooling since last night! My old high-school buddy Esther, who lives all the way in Wisconsin and has no patience whatsoever, has been hopping up and down wanting to know what I made for today’s event. So here it is my old friend, without further ado - drum roll please…..

Bread Ingredients:

(Makes 3 mini-loaves per original recipe, but I used a single 9″ round cake pan. First, this tastes more like cake anyway, second, what’s with all the extra stuff to wash?)

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 cup mashed bananas (3 small overripe bananas, about 1 pound)
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted

I changed this up a bit by adding

• 1/2 cup Nutella

For the Streusel:

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar (recipe called for light brown, I used what I had)
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Once again, I changed this up by adding

• 1/3 cup nutella, plus
• Nutella for decorative icing – as much or as little (gasp!) as you like

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl, and the wet ones (mashed banana, eggs, butter) in a large bowl, beating until smooth.  Then slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet, beating again until smooth, adding 1/2 of the 1/2 cup of Nutella at the end, beating just enough to incorporate. Pour batter into greased pan. sprinkle top with drizzles of remaining Nutella, pushing them into the batter just enough so they are no longer visible on top.

For the streusel mix all the ingredients together in a bowl until crumbly making sure the Nutella is well broken up and evenly distributed. Sprinkle streusel over the batter in the pan, and bake in a 350º oven for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool pan on a rack for 10 minutes before inverting to remove from pan.

This is bread so it's healthy, right? Wait, isn't the cacao bean a vegetable? Hazelnuts are good, right? Further rationalizations are offered at $1.00 each, please contact blogger directly.

For the decorative icing I put a big ole blob of Nutella in a baggie, cut off a small tip at the corner and “pastry-bagged” the squiggle you see in the picture. Hey, go nuts! The design is up to you.

The result is so good it’s hard not to eat every last crumb in one go:

Oh, I'm sorry, did you want a piece? You should have said something earlier....

YUM!!!!!!

I will definitely be making this again. Just before I go into a diabetic coma.

In the photo you can see the little blobs of Nutella peeking out of the inside of the bread – these are the little drizzles you pushed through the batter before baking. As you eat the bread your mouth comes upon these little surprise blobs of chocolatey-hazelnutty goodness…….oh, my, I need another slice right now…gottagobyenow!

Happy World Nutella Day everyone!!!!!!