Recipe: Ice Cream Cupcakes

                          

I'm back with another recipe today. I've been thinking of trying this out for a while and when they turned out better than expected, I just had to share it with you. These are my version of an ice cream cupcake. I made them so that cake looks like the cone whilst the icing looks like the soft scoop on top. My piping didn't turn out as well as I hoped so the icing part of this didn't turn as well but I was still impressed with the sponge and how I saved the icing. 

Ingredients 

For The Cupcakes 

- 110g Caster Sugar 

- 110g Plain Flour 

- 110g Butter/Stork, softened 

- 2 Tsps Baking Powder 

- 2 Tsps Vanilla Extract 

- 2 Eggs 

For The Buttercream 

- 175g Unsalted Butter, softened 

- 400g Icing Sugar, sifted 

- 2 Tsps Cocoa Powder 

- 2 Tsps Nesquik Strawberry Powder 

Method 

1- Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.

2- Place the softened butter/stork and the caster sugar into a bowl. Beat together until they're pale and creamy looking. 

3- Sift the flour and baking powder together. Whilst it may seem like a faff, it really helps with the texture of your cake and you aren't left with pockets of uncooked flour afterwards either. 

4- Add the dry ingredients to the mixture. 

5- Beat your eggs together and add them to the mixture. Mix together until everything is combined, making sure to scrape the sides of the bowl to incorporate all the ingredients.
6- Once everything is combined add the vanilla  extract and beat into the mixture.
7- When your happy with your mix, spoon it evenly into the paper cases and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
8- Leave them to cool in the tin for five minutes then transfer to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
9- Whilst they're cooling, it's time to start the buttercream/s. Start off by beating the softened unsalted butter until it's smooth. Then sift in the icing sugar, a little at a time and beat in, making sure it's fully incoporated before adding more.
10- Once all the icing sugar is mixed in, split the mixture between three bowls. The first bowl place to one side as you won't be needing to add anything to it. But bowls two and three you'll be mixing another powder ingredient in.
11- In one bowl add the cocoa powder and mix in until fully incoporated. It's easy to add powder flavourings such as cocoa powder as it helps keep the thick, almost fluffy looking consistency of the buttercream.
12- Once that's to your liking, add the strawberry powder to bowl three. Now this is going to take a lot more work to incoporate but it'll be worth it in the long run. And again it adds the desired colour as well as flavour without ruining the consistency of the buttercream.
13- Now comes the fun part. Spoon each buttercream mix into their own piping bag, making sure to take all the air out of the top before you start piping. Then just pipe the icing onto the now cooled cupcakes. You can do any pattern you like but I tried to do a swirl like a ice cream cone but had many issues with my piping bags so I ended up smoothing and creating a rough texture that still looks good with my buttercream.
14- Leave to set and then enjoy.