Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

An old favorite recipe, re-conceived with homemade chocolate cupcakes, a vanilla-chocolate swirled cream cheese frosting, and an optional chocolate ganache.

I wish I could take credit for such a cute, original idea as inserting cupcakes into ice cream cones, but these were first introduced to me via a printed recipe on the side of a Pillsbury box (I think) over a decade ago.  I decided to bring these creations back to life, only with a homemade cupcake recipe and frosting styled to be reminiscent of soft serve ice cream.

The cupcake recipe used here was inspired by Friday’s muffin/cupcake post. Already intensely chocolate, soft, and moist, I made only a few tweaks to my muffin recipe to make these 100% cupcake appropriate and gave them the ultimate cupcake crown: a generous swirl of chocolate and vanilla icing.  It’s an incredibly easy recipe too; one that can be whipped together without the use of a KitchenAid or even a hand mixer and made with ingredients you likely already have waiting in your cabinets.

Cream cheese icing has been my favorite choice for topping cupcakes since I first discovered it years ago, and I don’t believe that  I have a single frosting recipe on my blog that doesn’t use cream cheese.  Despite the fact that I consider myself to be a die-hard sugar fiend, classic buttercreams always tend to be overkill, and I often end up blasphemously pushing the too-sugary icing off to the side of my plate and discretely discarding it.

With this frosting, the cream cheese mellows the sweetness, creates a wonderfully soft texture (but is still stable enough to pipe into well-defined, soft serve-esque swirls) and complements the cupcake without killing it with sweetness (important, since such an abundant amount is used to top each cone).

I experimented with a soft, milk chocolate shell-like sauce/ganache over the frosting as well, and while I didn’t include the recipe for that below, you’ll find the link to it in the recipe (it’s the same easy to make and manage ganache I used in my recent Oreo cheesecake stuffed chocolate cake recipe).

While I firmly believe that ice cream is appropriate for any time of the year, I thought it might be best if I snuck these cutely decorated little cones in before summer melted away completely into school days and sweater-weather.

5 from 8 votes

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Cupcake Ice Cream Cones

Prep Time 45 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 15 minutes

Servings 24 cupcake cones

Ingredients

Cupcakes

• 24 flat-bottomed cupcake cones
• 1 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar packed
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt

Frosting

• 8 oz cream cheese softened
• 1/2 cup butter softened
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 5 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder

Instructions

Cupcakes

1. Preheat oven to 350 and carefully stand up cones in cupcake tray.
2. In large bowl, combine together milk, oil, and sugars. Stir well or beat with KitchenAid/handmixer on medium-high speed for 1-2 minutes.
3. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until well-combined.
4. Stir in vanilla extract.
5. In separate bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
6. Gradually stir flour mixture into liquid mixture until well-combined.
7. Fill ice cream cones up 3/4-full with batter. Carefull transfer to oven and bake for 28-30 minutes (or until toothpick inserted in center of cupcake comes out mostly dry with only a few crumbs).
8. Allow cupcakes to cool completely before icing.

Frosting

1. In KitchenAid or with hand mixer cream together cream cheese and butter. Stir in vanilla extract.
2. Gradually stir in powdered sugar until completely combined.
3. Remove half of the icing to a medium-sized bowl and set aside. To the remaining frosting, add cocoa powder and stir until well-combined.
4. Carefully fill one half of a large piping bag fitted with a star tip (Wilton 2B was used here) with the white frosting and the other half with the chocolate.
5. Pipe on top of cooled cupcakes.
6. If desired, drizzle with ganache from this recipe (allowed to cool for at least 5-10 minutes and sprinkle with colored sprinkles.
7. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

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