The Nostalgic Ice Cream On The Cake: A Mint Chip Off The Old Block

June 12 , 2016 by: Amber Trudeau Cake, Cupcakes, Icing

What would a month worth of ice cream flavoured cakes be without actually consuming said cake out of an actual ice cream cone? Luckily, I’m here to save the day and provide you with this option. Portable, whimsical, and deliciously bite sized (if you’re down with using mini ice cream cones anyway. Feel free to use full sized ones if you want). For me, I find that your traditional ice cream cones are fairly terrible tasting, so I opted for mini so that the ratio of cake to flavourless cone was an optimal one 🙂 .

Now you might just say “Amber – why don’t you just use waffle or sugar cones instead?”. This would be a very reasonable and intelligent question. Lest you think I’m just a complete ice cream cone hat wearing dunce however, I will have you know that this very thought did indeed occur to me. In fact, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to get this idea to work in the way that I wanted. Unfortunately, if you look at the shape of a traditional cone (nice flat bottom – which might not be what you’re looking for in your personal posterior, but trust me, in this case, that’s exactly what you want), vs the shape of a waffle or sugar cone (which unlike a traditional cone, are actually correctly named in that they are indeed cone shaped), you may begin to see where some difficulty might arise in the baking process.

Now you can totally Google this, at which point you will discover that you can buy a cupcake ice cream cone baking holder, but let’s be real here, I don’t cater whimsical children’s birthday parties and thus, in all likelihood, I would never use it again. That being the case, there is no way that I’m willing to be conned (or “coned” if you prefer 😉 ) into giving up precious kitchen real estate for such nonsense (con(e)-sense? 😉 sorry, too many cone puns, I just can’t stop myself). I also found a couple of people who had the potentially genius idea of just wedging your cones into the oven rack itself. Now this seemed smart, but also too stressfully dangerous for me. I love livin’ on the edge and all that, but not when it involves potentially cleaning out an oven full of burnt on cupcake bits (also – extreme and sad waste of sugary goodness 🙁 ). And so, I was strong armed (by me, myself and I) into using your regular ice cream cones (booooo!!!!). Luckily I found mini ones though which assuaged my irritation somewhat (yeah!!!!!) as this allowed for a much more pleasing ratio of cone to cake (namely – less cone, more cake). I also accidentally found mini waffle cone bowls and figured I’d give those a try as well. Huzzah! So many possibilities.

IMG_3751Another way that I could have saved the day with these if I hadn’t run absurdly short on time (and which you may feel free to use if you also happen to dislike the tasteless cardboard that serves as a so-called “edible” vehicle for ice cream and will also allow you to say that you’re better/ more creative than me) is to dip the base of the cone in mint infused chocolate (frankly, even if you love ice cream cones – for which I don’t understand you at all – you should still do this. What’s not to love about more chocolate mint?).

IMG_3750In in the interest of slightly pretty-ifying these (because yes, I have in fact noticed that my lazy way of piping out my chocolate buttercream, particularly as it appears on a grass coloured backdrop of mint cupcake, makes it appear to look like something your dog um…baked up in its intestinal oven. Yeah, that was probably too gross. Sorry.) I topped them with quartered mint Oreos. Now that’s the real icing on the cake 😉

Mint Chip Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

Yield: 30 mini ice cream cone cupcakes or 10-12 waffle cone bowl cupcakes

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups cake/pastry flour (or all purpose is fine too)
  • 1 cup cane sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup vegan butter, room temperature
  • 2 egg replacer
  • 2 teaspoons matcha green tea powder (for colour)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 teaspoons mint extract
  • 1/2 cup almond milk
  • 3/4 cup chocolate chunks (or chocolate chips are fine too)
  • 8 mint flavoured Oreos, or 30 mini Oreos (if mini mint Oreos actually exist, that would probably be best, but I couldn’t find any)

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 325F. Carefully place your mini ice cream cones upright in a mini muffin pan. If you’re using regular ice cream cones, obviously use regular sized muffin pans. If you’re using waffle bowls, just place on a baking sheet.
  2. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
  3. On low speed of a hand mixer, slowly add in the vegan butter a few cubes (or blobs if you’re me) at a time, mixing until there are no huge chunks left.
  4. Add egg replacer one at a time, blending between each addition.
  5. Add in the vanilla and mint extracts mixing to combine. Mix in your matcha powder if using.
  6. Add the almond milk in a few additions, mixing between each addition.
  7. Stir in chocolate chunks.
  8. Fill ice cream cones or waffle cones with batter (maybe about 1/2 to 1 inch below the lip of your cone of choice) and bake for 12-15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
  9. Allow to cool while making chocolate buttercream frosting.
  10. Frost cupcakes with chocolate buttercream (see recipe below) and either top with a mini Oreo, or cut your full sized mint Oreo into quarters and top cupcake with that (top waffle bowls with half an Oreo).
  11. Store in the refrigerator.

Chocolate Buttercream

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cups vegan butter, room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons melted vegan chocolate
  • 1/3 cup cocoa powder
  • 2/3 cup icing sugar
  • 1-2 tablespoons almond milk

Directions

  1. In a medium sized bowl, beat together the butter, vanilla and melted chocolate.
  2. Slowly add the cocoa powder and mix to combine.
  3. Beat in the icing sugar.
  4. Add the almond milk slow, only adding as much as you need to get the right spreadable consistency.

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About Amber

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Hi, I'm Amber Trudeau.  I bake.... a lot.

I'm also vegan, and found that whenever I went out to a restaurant my dessert choices were limited to sorbet, sorbet, and sorbet.  So I started making my own desserts. I wanted them to taste good though - so my ultimatum was to make delicious desserts that also happen to be dairy-free and egg-free. Every week or so, I challenge myself to try something new.  To recreate some kind of traditional dessert that tastes amazing without using animal products.

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