Neapolitan Icecream Sundae Cupcakes

Last month my work hosted the Biggest Morning Tea to help raise well needed funds for the Cancer Council. For more info about the Cancer Council and their research or to donate head their website here. Not only was this a great event to allow us to raise money for much needed cancer research but it also gave me an excuse to bake! (Not that I really need an excuse).

So even though its the middle of winter, doesn't mean its too cold for ice-cream ...ice-cream cupcakes that is! Well ... not really icecream cucpcakes, more iceceam inspired cupcakes. I had orginally wanted to try doing a rainbow polka dot cake or rainbow polka dot cupcakes, but was a bit short for time so ended up using half the rainbow instead and doing neapolitan.

I started off using my basic vanilla cupcake recipe. Once the mixture was complete I split it into three seperate bowls to make the 3 different flavours and colours. I simply added cocoa powder for the chocolate, pink gel colouring for the pink, also with a hint of strawberry essence then left the third part of the mixture as was for the vanilla.

Then I layered them when I put them into the cupcake trays. I couldn't remember the proper order of the icecream and google gave me a few different answers so I had chocolate, strawberry then vanilla in my head, so thats what I did!

They turned out quite well, with not too much of the strawberry showing from under the vanilla.

Next was onto the frosting. Again I followed with the Neapolitan theme, but I also wanted to add the sundae element to the cupcake. I used a basic buttercream frosting and again added cocoa powder for the chocolate, strawberry essence and pink gel colouring for the strawberry and left the mixture the same for the vanilla.

So following the same layers as the cupcake, my first layer or frosting was chocolate.

Next was strawberry 

And then on top of that I finished with the vanilla

At this stage I realised I had run out of piping bags! I only had 2 in my cupboard but of course I needed 3, so for the vanilla I had to resort to using a zip lock bag, that was a bit of an interesting experience, but desperate times call for desperate measures! Nonetheless it did the job :)

Next was to add some chocoloate sauce. I melted some plain Cadbury milk chocolate melts, put it into a zip lock bag, (a proper use for a zip lock bag) snipped the corner then lightly drizzled chocolate over the cupcake, the same way you would with chocolate sauce on your ice cream. 

The final 2 steps were to ad a jaffa on the top and a small piece of wafer to the side, and there you have it, Neapolitan Icecream Sundae cupcakes!

There are many different ways you can theme these cupcakes to be like a sundae, you can add strawberry sauce instead of chocolate, or add sprinkles etc Tell me how you would make your Sundae cupcakes, I would love to know!

Oh and you may notice in some of the pictures, one of my jaffas on top of the cupcakes is pink! As these cupcakes are so tall, I couldnt fit them into my normal cupcake carrier so I had to squeeze them into tall plastic containers instead, only I didnt have enough room for the last one, so it went into the frige as is. Then when I pulled it out the next morning it had turned pink! Neat! Just a sneaky tip for you if ever need pink balls as decorations :)

I scream! U scream! Ice cream!

Yes, that's right, my second post on my blog and it's not even about cupcakes! Shame on me! Lol

So the other day at work our 'caretaker' guy person said he was cleaning out our staff fridge/freezers, so we all cleared out our leftovers and lunches etc. The next day I walk into work and put my lunch in the now sparkling clean fridge only to find this on the top shelf ...

Firstly what is an icecream cake doing in the FRIDGE?! Silly man! Secondly I had completely forgotten about it! I made it for one of my managers a few months ago, (yes thats right I did say a few months ago, it was in the freezer so it was still ok to eat) as it was her bday and I had promised her all summer that I would make her this fab icecream cake that she used to always have as a kid. Anyway she gave me this recipe from I think a Aust Women's Weekly book, honestly I can't really remember I just took it and said 'yeah, yeah, I'll make it for you one day' hahaha

Turns out its actually super easy to make and tastes delicious, perfect on a hot summers day!

All you do is buy a big tub of vanilla icecream, one of those 4L ones then thaw it out a little, just so it's soft, but not completely melted and runny. Then you add anything you want! So I added custard, raspberries (frozen or fresh, either is fine) pistachio nuts (gave it a nice crunch), Turkish delight, preferably the authentic stuff (the ones coated in icing sugar, yum!) but if not the chocolate ones are fine too. Then you just mix it all together then pour it into one of those spring lock cake tins (the ones that are good to use for cheesecakes) then chuck it back in the freezer and freeze overnight and that's it. You can add more stuff on top when u serve it up, just to make it look pretty, but that's it, I did tell u it was super easy right. And this should be the end result ...

So, has anyone else made an icecream cake before? What did u put in ures?