Chocolate and Vanilla Icecream Cone Cupcakes

These lovelies were made for an end-of-the-year picnic and were still pretty experimental. I had seen the recipe online and wanted to try it for myself, and figured a largish event would be a good place to get some feedback.

Having yet to discover my perfect cupcake recipe, I tried Alton Brown's Chocolate Chiffon Cupcake recipe. While I love Alton Brown, I was sorely unimpressed with this particular recipe of his. Consequently, I made Amy Sedaris's Cupcake recipe for the half-dozen vanilla cupcakes.


Amy Sedaris's Cupcakes
This recipe yields about 24 cupcakes; I scaled it down to half for my purposes.

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 cups milk

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Beat in eggs and vanilla. Mix in milk, salt, and baking powder. Carefully add the flour.

Beat well and fill a muffin tin lined with paper cupcake cups 3/4 of the way full. Spray cupcake cups lightly with Pam before pouring batter.

Bake at 375 for 18 to 20 minutes.


I also used traditional buttercream (butter and confectioner's sugar) plus a chocolate buttercream, which is probably the best thing going.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 2/3 cups confectioner's sugar
1/3 cup half and half or milk (or sour cream)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Unsweetened Dutch Cocoa Powder (1/3 cup for light, milk chocolate; 1/2 cup for medium-chocolate; 3/4 cup for rich, dark chocolate).

Mix together the confectioner's sugar and desired amount of cocoa powder until evenly distributed.

Cream the butter until softened. Add vanilla.

Slowly add in confectioner's sugar and cocoa mix until evenly distributed. Add milk to thin mixture out until it is stiff enough to be pipe-able.

Seriously. Good. Stuff.


Perhaps the most ingenious part of this whole get up was the method of transportation. I couldn't find anything that would keep my cupcakes safe for their journey to their final destination in a park, so I improvised and made my own.

I took two doughnut boxes from the bakery at my local grocery store and taped the two boxes together. I then figured out approximately how big the base of the cupcake cones were and traced that shape onto the paper bottom. I then used an X-acto knife to *carefully* cut each hole out. I dropped my cupcakes in and et-voila! No mishaps during transport.

ah, these were the early days...they were good, but I'm glad I've got my recipes figured out now.