Strawberry Ice Cream Cupcakes

It's that time of year again when I break up for the summer holiday and celebrate my birthday. As Hubby & I have known each other for 9 years he knows exactly what I like. With the KitchenAid for my birthday last year and the trip to River Cottage for Christmas he outdid himself yet again this year with an iPhone for me. I've been talking about buying myself one for ages, but have been saving up. For my birthday I also got some beautiful flowers, lovely set of new saucepans (after the handles fell off my old ones), microplane grater, Lothian raspberry vodka from Demijohn and some other lovely foodie gifts. What you can't see in the photo above was that 3rd Birthday was the birthday I got a Fisher Price kitchen set for my birthday, a sign of things to come?

To celebrate my birthday we had a BBQ, something of which has come a bit of a tradition. Thankfully the rain held off and in amongst the various vegetables and raised beds we had a barbecued shoulder of hogget (sourced from a smallholding friend) along with some tomato focaccia, roasted new potatoes, beetroot hummus and salad.

For after the BBQ I made a peach melba jelly and also wanted a nostalgic cake. When I saw the Ice Cream Cupcakes on Mums Who Bake a few weeks back I knew they would be perfect. As a child I can remember how much I loved the marshmallow filled ice cream cones that were a treat and any trip to the seaside was incomplete without a Mr Whippy. As strawberries often featured in my childhood birthday cakes I wanted to add the pulp from the last few strawberries from the garden into the icing.



One thing about traditional cupcakes is that I'm not a big fan of buttercream as I find it too sweet, so decided to try a cream cheese frosting. Well, I have to say I'm converted to cream cheese icing. Although it doesn't last as long as buttercream and it isn't as stiff, it's not as sweet as buttercream and absolutely delicious. I could quite happily just eat the icing! I really enjoyed my making these cakes and I'm going to try and do more swirly icing on cakes now I've found an icing I like. Still need a bit more practice with the icing bag and I'm going to try and see if I can find bigger icing nozzles as the shops here have quite a limited selection.

One thing I did learn from this is don't overfill the ice cream cone or it will dramatically burst and dribble cake mix down the cone.

Strawberry Ice Cream Cupcakes
Makes 8-10

For the cakes
125g plain flour
125g vanilla sugar (or caster sugar)
125g softened butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 tsp baking powder
8 flat bottomed ice cream cones

For the icing
240g cream cheese, cold from the fridge (it has to be the full fat version or it won't work)
80g softened butter
150g - 190g icing sugar (to taste)
the pulp of a few mashed strawberries
3 full sized flakes cut into 1/4

1) Preheat the oven to 180oc. Beat together the sugar, butter and eggs, then mix in the rest of the ingredients.

2) Line up the cones on a baking sheet. It does make it slightly easier if you put the cones in the cups of a bun pan.

3) Fill up the cones about 2/3 with cake mix. Don't overfill or they go everywhere! Bake in the oven for 15 min, or until they are golden and pass the skewer test. Allow to cool on a wire rack before icing.

4) Once the cakes have cooled beat together the butter and cream cheese then mix in the sieved icing sugar to taste. Fold in the strawberries then pipe onto the the cakes. Decorate with a flake.

5) If you want the icing to be a bit firmer, chill in the fridge for a few hours.

A Kind of Key Lime Pie

It could take me a while to write this entry as I have quite a large Pimms induced headache...Above is a photo of our back garden at 8.30 this morning. It was lovely and cool and peaceful. It may be small, but still great for entertaining and relaxing. Our vegetables in the planter are doing far better than the did last year. I was trying to take a photo of Mr Robin who is forever in our garden, but he was being a bit camera shy. Last night we had the first BBQ of the year and christened our new BBQ. Well I say "new" go bought it at the end of Summer 2006, but due to the weather being so awful last year it never made it out of the box.

We cheated slightly and got chorizo sausages and lamb and mint burgers from the butcher, but I made a rack of Alabama pork ribs with a sweet and spicy glaze that was delicious. It was all served with pitta breads, rocket salad plus potatoes, onions and mushrooms that were cooked on the BBQ.

It was washed down with Pimms, River Cottage Stinger Ale, and Schweppes Summer Punch which is a great non-alcoholic Pimms tasting drink.



The pudding was the hardest thing to decide on. In my eyes a perfect BBQ pudding involves glorious Summer fruit like Eton Mess or Summer Tiramasu, but the PYO farm down the road isn't open yet as it is still a bit early for strawberries and I refuse to spend £2 on a punnet of 8 sorry-looking strawberries from Morrisons. Nigella came to my rescue with a Key Lime pie. It was a perfect, light refreshing end to the BBQ. The one problem I did have, which may be apparent in the photo, is the biscuit base. It just didn't stick together. I was a bit dubious when I read the recipe for the base, to me it couldn't possibly work but took my trust in Nigella. Next time I make it I'll use the base recipe I use in my Baileys Cheesecake. In the recipe below I have included the altered base recipe.

A Kind of Key Lime Pie
Serves 8-12

170g digestive biscuits, crushed
70g butter
Juice and zest of 4 limes
400g can of condensed milk
300ml double cream

1) Melt butter in saucepan then stir in crushed digestive biscuits until thoroughly mixed. Press into 20cm diameter springform tin. Press up the edges a bit to give a crust. Chill for an hour

2) With an electric whisk, beat together the cream, juice, zest and condensed milk until thick and creamy. Pour over base and sprinkle with some of the lime zest. Chill for at least and hour before serving.