Cupcake Ice Cream Cones

Who doesn’t love their birthday?  I mean, it’s once a year, and yes it signifies that you are getting older, but isn’t that a fact of life?  Everyone gets older.  Everyone gets gray hair, and everyone has a birthday, every year.  It’s the one day that you can choose the menu, the activity, the guests, all on your own.

This year is significant in many ways.  But mostly, as pertaining to you-blog readers, its significant because it’s the one year anniversary of my blog.  I know.  A whole year!  But that will be another post.

This, however, is my birthday post and my birthday would not be complete without some Spice Cake. Betty Crocker style.  My mom makes a killer homemade Spice Cake, but each time I try it doesn’t taste like hers.  And because we live in different states, I opt for Betty because you can’t really mess that up.

However, I did.  Mess it up.  Not the baking part.  Or even the decorating.  But the aftermath.  After I decorated 18 of these cute little cupcake ice cream cones, I dropped them.  16 of them.  On the way to the fridge.  The photo you see here is one of the remaining two that I managed to save, and snap a quick photo before I had none left.

But these are such a cute idea, and I am determined to make these a success, so here are a few ice cream one holders that you can purchase so that my disaster does not become your disaster:

This one is kind of vintage, but only holds four.  I guess four is better than two though.

This one looks more like an ice cream shop’s cone holder.  And holds up to 9 cones.

Or, my personal favorite that I will try next time.  Get a tupperware pan, about 13×9 or larger so that you can fit as many cones as you would like.  Cover the outside with the fabric of your choice, perhaps your favorite color or the theme of the birthday party, so that it looks less like tupperware and more like a unique serving dish.  Then fill the tupperware with sugar, almost to the top.  Stick the cones in the sugar, which will hold the cones in place.  Of course they still are not easily transportable this way, so if you need to take them somewhere, get there early and decorate there.  If not, then place the cones into the sugar “serving dish” as you decorate them in the spot that you intend to serve them.

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

1 box of your favorite cake mix

1 jar of your favorite icing

2 plastic ziplock bags (or your own piping tools for icing)

18-22 cake cones

Duncan Hines “Amazing Glazes” (*coupon with this link!)

1 small jar of maraschino cherries

small strainer

honey roasted peanuts

multi colored sprinkles

muffin tin holder

tupperware container

sugar

fabric for decorations

Follow the directions on box to mix cake.  Stand cake cones upright in mini muffin tin holder.  Fill each cake cone with 1/4 cup of batter. Place in preheated oven according to box cake instructions.  Cook 20-22 minutes, insuring that stick or fork is clean when placed in the middle of the baked cake batter.  Remove from oven and let cool.  Once thoroughly cooled, place a few spoonfuls of icing into ziplock bag.  Close the top of the bag completely, first allowing air to be released.  Place 18-22 cherries into strainer so that the extra juice will run off naturally and not create a red puddle on your icing. Cut off the tip of the corner of the bag, less than a half an inch form the point of the bag.  Pipe the icing onto each cone so that it billows up as whipped cream would do on an ice cream sundae.  Only do about 4 at a time because you want your icing to remain moist to the other toppings will stick.  Heat the Duncan Hines “Amazing Glaze” for 30 seconds and gently pour on top of the icing, making sure that it does not drip down the sides of the cone.  Then, place sprinkles, peanuts, or other desired toppings onto icing.  Place one cherry on top of each icing billow, not being afraid of pressing lightly to ensure that the cherry will hold in place.  Place cones into chosen cone holder.

Serve 1-3 hours later, because if you wait too long, the cones will soak up the moisture from the cake and loose their crunchy texture.  Enjoy!