Some Ice Cream Cupcakes I'm Dying To Try

The 2011 Ice Cream Contest entry deadline was June 15, and as bakers, we're all waiting eagerly to see which cupcakes make the top three (I made New York State Upside-Down Ice Cream Cupcakes!). They're were so many gorgeous, creative entries. While I wait, I wanted to share with you just a few of my favorite ice cream cupcake entries. Click on the links for more information about these beautiful cupcakes including recipes and more pictures.

Here they are, in no particular order.

I could still be obsessed with hazelnuts after making the Nutella Scones a few weeks back, but these Honey Hazelnut Cupcakes with Gianduja Gelato caught my attention right away. The presentation, with just a few hazelnuts nestled in the middle of the carefully placed chocolate honey ganache, is just beautiful. The finished cupcake is simple and classy. Admire it at Vivian Macaroon.

These Chocolate Peanut Butter Sand Pail Cupcakes are adorable, and they look just like their namesake. They're by Chip Chip Hooray, and they feature chocolate peanut butter cupcakes (my FAVORITE combination), Milk 'n Cookies ice cream and a peanut butter buttercream. They're topped with some crumbled brown sugar (doesn't it look just like sand?). The handle on the side just seals the deal. I think these would be perfect for a birthday party by the beach.

After the best s'mores of my life while canoeing recently, I just couldn't pass up these s'mores cupcake ice cream sandwiches. They're stuffed with marshmallow ice cream. They've got graham cracker crusts on the top and bottom. And they've got a layer of chocolate cupcake. Divine. Thank you, 52 Kitchen Adventures, for making me so, so hungry.

These Take 6 cupcakes, inspired by the Take 5 candy bar, are a delicious creation by Parsnips and Sprockets. The bottom layer is a chocolate cupcake. It's topped with peanut butter frosting, vanilla ice cream, pretzels, peanuts, a homemade caramel sauce, chocolate shell AND chocolate dipped pretzel. Not only are they absolutely adorable, they're also vegan and completely homemade! Visit Amber's blog for a handful of other ideas of how to arrange the layers to create beautiful ice cream cupcakes.

I had to include at least one cupcake that was chocolate free (have you noticed a trend?), and this Lemon Almond Love cupcake from Young Idealistic Baker caught my eye. She made a lemon-almond cupcake, filled it with lemon curd and a homemade almond ice cream, topped it with an almond butter cream frosting, and placed the most creative flower I've ever seen on top. The flower is made out of thinly sliced almonds, carefully placed around like petals, with a sprinkle flower center. And, she had such a creative cupcake sampling process. I think I'll have to recruit volunteers to do that next year!

This Meringue Gelato cupcake by The Insomniac Baker was one of the first entries posted for this year's Ice Cream Cupcake Contest, and it's stuck with me ever since. Alisa describes it as "a very light cupcake with a darkly seductive taste." It's two angel food cupcakes, sandwiching a homemade meringue gelato (with real, crushed meringues inside it!), topped with a swiss buttercream frosting, and finished with a cute meringue hat. They were for her brother's birthday (the lucky duck). With a presentation like this, I can overlook the omission of chocolate. 

Visit Cupcake Project on Facebook to view all the entries. Which ice cream cupcakes are your favorite? 

New York State Upside-Down Ice Cream Cupcakes (for the 2011 Ice Cream Cupcake Contest)

I can honestly say I've been dreaming of entering a cooking contest since I was 10. I'd pour over every issue of the Lowell Ledger, our very local newspaper, and I'd imagine what recipe I'd make for the chili contest at the Kiwanis Club or the pie bake-off at the local fair. Last summer, I considered entering the Pie in the Park contest but never quite got around to it. The desire to enter a cooking contest never faded away.

This week, I finally took the cooking contest plunge (although in a slightly different, more virtual venue that 10-year-old me couldn't have imagined would be possible). I decided to participate in the 2011 Ice Cream Cupcake Contest created by Cupcake Project and Scoopalicious. The challenge: create a recipe for an ice cream cupcake (that combines cake and ice cream), photograph it and blog about it. I committed, but I just had to make my creation.

Then, the New York Times posted this recipe for rhubarb upside-down cake. The recipe has you create a quick brown sugar and butter sauce to spread in the bottom of the pan, add chopped rhubarb (uncooked) and top it with cake batter. The recipe promised a delightful layer of tender pink rhubarb atop a moist cake.

I created these New York State Upside-Down Ice Cream Cupcakes as a testament to this season's New York state produce. Rhubarb came into season first, and strawberries just joined it. After a winter of eating root vegetables and cellared apples, I was ready to celebrate! Ronnybrook Farm Dairy in the Hudson River Valley provided the dairy products I needed to make the complete project a success. 

I adapted the rhubarb upside-down cake into cupcakes that were loaded with rhubarb topping. I greased and re-greased the pans so the cupcakes wouldn't stick. Each cupcake was given a spoonful of brown sugar and butter, a full layer of rhubarb and then filled about 2/3 of the way full with batter.

As the cupcakes cooked, the brown sugar and butter mixture bubbled up a bit over the sides. The baking pan I placed underneath the cupcakes as they baked was a life saver and saved me from scrubbing burnt caramel off the bottom of my oven.

I still had a batch of roasted rhubarb ice cream, using some of the beautiful local rhubarb I picked up during a trip to the farmer's market. I sliced fresh strawberries and whipped up a quick batch of whipped cream.

Assembling the ice cream cupcakes was the fun part. There are countless ways you can assemble your cupcakes (Stef from Cupcake Project has a great list of options), but I decided to go with the slice-and-stuff idea. I sliced the cupcake in half, being careful to avoid the delicate rhubarb layer. I added a layer of strawberries, topped it with spoonfuls of rhubarb ice cream and put the top back on. A spoonful of whipped cream finished it off perfectly.

Strawberry Shortcakes: The Perfect Serving Vessel

As my roasted rhubarb vanilla ice cream churned away in my ice cream machine, I knew I had to figure out the perfect way to serve it. I also knew that I had leftover half-and-half from making the ice cream that I needed to use up.

The New Basics Cookbook didn't let me down. When I opened it up, I found their new basic (sweet) biscuit recipe, which not only sounded delicious but would allow me to use up the remainder of my half-and-half. A win-win situation indeed.

The biscuits came together in a flash (less than five minutes from starting the process to putting them in the oven), and I whipped up a quick strawberry topping with chopped strawberries and a sprinkling of sugar.

A sweet biscuit, topped with a scoop of roasted rhubarb vanilla ice cream and chopped strawberries. Perfection.

Roasted Rhubarb Vanilla Ice Cream

I came home from the farmers' market on Saturday with a beautiful bunch of fresh red rhubarb stalks and no strawberries. It's still so early in the strawberry season, and they were selling at the market this week for eight dollars a pint, so I resisted. In hindsight, that decision ended up being a hidden gift, because it forced me to move beyond strawberry-rhubarb pies, galettes, and crumbles to come up with a more creative recipe using rhubarb.

Roasted rhubarb puree

A quick phone call home to chat with my dad yielded this recipe for Savory Rhubarb Lentil Dal from Mark Bittman. Interesting idea, but the idea of the first rhubarb of the season just disintegrating into a dish just seemed disappointing. I wanted this rhubarb to pop!

That's when I stumbled across this delightful blog by Tom from Tall Clover Farm, where he posts about the fruit he grows and the pies he makes. He'll also give you advice about how to set up your own compost bin and he'll tell you where to find the cute new raincoats his dogs are sporting.

Most importantly, he taught me how to make my first cooked custard ice cream. I've been eyeing cooked custard ice cream recipes since I got The Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, and Sweet  and Accompaniments and an ice cream maker for my birthday from my New Jersey relatives! I've made several of his Philadelphia ice cream recipes, which are uncooked, to great success, but I haven't attempted his multi-step custards.

Tom's recipe made it seem so easy, and it was! His step-by-step directions and gorgeous pictures drew me right in. What could be better than a vanilla custard ice cream with roasted rhubarb puree mixed in?

To determine whether the custard is fully cooked, run your finger down the spatula. If your finger leaves a path that is not quickly filled in by custard, it's ready!

This ice cream is full of flavor and so tasty. It was hard to balance scooping it into freezer containers and tasting! Now to figure out what to serve it with..... a post on that to come later!