Banana Cupcakes with Nutella Buttercream

As previously stated Nutella is one of my top 5 favorite ingredients, and for like 2 years now I have been claiming I want to create some form of a banana Nutella cupcake. Well, tomorrow is my last day of work with my little babies (I'm moving on up to the 2 year olds haha) so I thought I would bake my lovely ladies something special.
I found the following recipe for a banana cupcake as a starting point, but as usual things did not go quite as planned...
I doubled the recipe so mine looked like this:
Cake:
3 1/2 c flour
1 tbsp + 1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 c butter
1 c white sugar
4 eggs
1 pouch banana applesauce (ok, things get weird I will explain...)
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 c milk
4 large bananas

Buttercream:
1 1/3 c butter
1 tsp vanilla
4 1/2 c confectioner's sugar
2 tbsp hazelnut flavored coffee creamer (um, yeah..)
6 oz Nutella

Preheat oven to 350 and place liners in your pans. I have one normal size cupcake tin and one 6 count giant muffin tin, so I came out with 12 + 6 cupcakes.

Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in small bowl. Cream together butter and sugar until fluuffy. Add eggs one at a time. (This is about when I realized I only had 4 eggs. I know you can use applesauce and bananas both as egg substitutes, and because it was already a banana flavored cupcake I decided I could use one of the banana applesauce fruit crushers I take in my lunch. (yes, I realize that applesauce in a pouch is for 5 year olds so they don't need a spoon and still get fruit...but I need fruit, too!))  Add the vanilla with the last egg and beat well. Add flour mixture and milk alternately mixing until just incorporated. Fold in chopped bananas. Pour into pans and bake for about 20 minutes. (The bigger cupcakes needed about 5 extra minutes)

To make the buttercream, beat 1 1/3 c butter until smooth and glossy. Add vanilla and confectioner's sugar until there are no lumps. Then I added the Nutella. I am guessing on the amount because I just kept adding spoon fulls until I felt it tasted right. The original recipe has no Nutella and calls for 1/4 c heavy cream to be added once you've beaten it smooth. The Nutella made things quite thick and as I had no heavy cream....I decided hazelnut flavored coffee creamer would be juuuust fine. I added enough to thin out the icing. I won't lie, this stuff is amazingly delicious.

The cupcakes aren't very sweet which is great because the buttercream is decadent. Next time I think I would add one more banana, just for some extra flavor. All in all though, I call this a HUGE success!!