'Ice Cream' cupcakes

My daughter loves to bake cupcakes, and when she was invited to her friend's 21st birthday party recently she had the urge to bake something nice for the girls at the pre-party get-together. She had seen a picture of these 'ice cream' cupcakes and decided to give them a go.

She baked cupcakes in flat based wafer ice cream cups. When they were cool she piped pink tinted buttercream over the tops and added jumbo sprinkles and half a flake so they looked just like ice cream cones! Needless to say...they didn't last very long!


Ingredients:
Wafer Ice Cream Cups
Basic cupcake recipe
200g Icing Sugar
100g Butter - room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pink food colouring
Jumbo sprinkles
Chocolate Flakes

Place the ice cream cups into a muffin tin and 3/4 fill each with cake batter. Bake at 140deg for approx 35 mins until risen and firm to touch. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
Cream together the butter and icing sugar in a mixer on high speed until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and pink colouring and beat well. Place the buttercream icing into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle and swirl the icing like an ice cream cone to cover the sponge on the top of the ice cream cup. Place jumbo sprinkles into the icing and insert 1/2 a chocolate flake.

Cupcakes or Buns?

I read so much on the web and in magazines about cupcakes. We always called them buns! Is there a difference? Is it that a bun is plain and a cupcake has a fancy icing? Or is Cupcake the american name for buns?
Sometimes the simplest things are the tastiest and they dont come much simpler than these buns. I usually throw in a batch of buns when the oven is hot as they only take 20mins from start to finish. Then you can leave them plain dusted with icing sugar, or decorate them with glacé icing, buttercream or fresh cream as below.

Basic Bun recipe

• 225g self raising flour
• 225g castor sugar
• 225g soft margarine
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 eggs

Place all the above ingredients into a food mixer (or large bowl and use a hand mixer) and mix until smooth. If the mixture seems a little thick you can add a few drops of milk.
Line a bun tray with paper liners and place a spoonful of the mixture into each case (roughly half filling each case). There will be enough mixture to fill 2x12 hole bun trays or you can bake them one immediately after the other. Bake at 175C for about 12-15 mins until light golden and set. Then remove from the bun trays and cool on a wire cake rack.
Decorating: Once cool you can simply dust the buns with icing sugar or decorate anyway you please. As a special treat I like to make butterfly buns with fresh cream.

Butterly buns
Take a small sharp knife and cut the top off each bun, angling the knife downwards to cut a hollow. Keep the piece you have cut off. Place a small blob of raspberry jam in the hollow and then top with some whipped sweetened cream (you can pipe it if you want it to look fancy). Take the top that you cut off and cut it in half then place the two halves into the cream like butterfly wings. Dust with icing sugar to finish.

Equipment List

• Stand Mixer or Hand Mixer
• Bun Tray
• Paper bun case liners
• Spatula
• Mixing Bowl