Saturday 1 October 2011

Ice... Cream Cake?

It being Children's Day, it would be the perfect time for cupcakes and ice-cream... only in this heat, how could an ice-cream retain its shape?  Ah-ha!  The perfect solution then: an "Ice" Cream Cupcake! ;)


This is really an easy and fun project for the kids to do too.  I started out with a flat bottom ice-cream cone wafer.  Flat bottom, because I wanted to end up with a cake that looked like McDonald's Vanilla Cone, and also because it would be less of a hassle to bake.

I used my favourite chocolate cupcake recipe and poured it into the cups.  I used the muffin tray to help hold the cones evenly separated.  With the recipe, I was able to make 18 cones.




Next, I made a perfect buttercream for this weather: Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

I discovered this recipe while looking for a better buttercream recipe, and this was the result.  Swiss Meringue, because of the way it cooks the egg whites, creates a buttercream that holds well in our hot and humid weather, and yet has a silky, creamy texture - much like a soft, creamy marshmallow. *dreamy sigh*


Instead of posting up the how-to, here's a video of how simple it is to make:



Although the ratio for the eggwhite:sugar:butter is 1:2:3, I actually used 70g egg white (from 2 eggs), 125g sugar and 200g butter.

After the cake was cooled, I covered the top with the cream and then piped the soft-swirl look on the cones...

And ta-da!

Happy Children's Day, young and young-at-heart! =)

ETA (2 March 2012):
I made this again, on my Girl's request that I make it for her Birthday.

Instead of using the SMBC, I just used a plain meringue frosting.  The frosting held up better and was much easier to pipe.  I used about 1:1 amount of eggwhite to sugar, and added vanilla for the white cones and added strawberry emluco for the pink ones. :)

The Meringue frosting kept better and was better received by the kids.  It tasted like marshmallow. ;)
I used these baskets, and sewed fishing lines across to hold the cones apart.  It also stabilised the cones so that I could carry it to school.
I used another basket to cover the bottom basket, and taped the sides to secure.  The blue baskets were later used to elevate the cones for display.

Happy 6th Birthday, Beautiful Girl! :)
I used 6 'Happy Birthday' tags to jazz up the cakes.  With cones, displaying them is a bit difficult.  I had a '6' candle that's at the table, which you can't see in this pic.  The pink and purple cloth are recycled from last year's display, and they are hiding the blue baskets. ;)

2 comments:

Blessed Homemaker said...

When I first made my SMBC, I used this video as a reference too. I didn't use this 123 recipe but used Tartelette's.

Did your cone turn soft after baking? Mine does.

Brenda said...

Yes, my cones do turn soft if the cones are not eaten in about 12 hours. It's the nature of wafers to turn soft in our humid environment, so it's normal.