Ice Cream Cupcakes

This week is all about mystery here at Sweet and Spicy Monkey as I will be featuring recipes using Dum Dum's Lollipops  mystery flavors. And for today's recipe, I will be using everyone's favorite, bacon!

Yes, you read that right, B-A-C-O-N, as in bacon lollipops! I crushed the lollipops to sprinkle on top of my "cupcakes". They are what make this recipe of Ice Cream Cupcakes! The sweet and savory flavor of bacon mixed with a chocolate mocha cream cheese frosting (or peanut butter cream cheese frosting, take your pick) along with caramel, chocolate, and/or banana ice cream. Mmmm...can you taste it yet?

I was asked by Spangler Candy Company, who makes Dum Dum's Lollipops, to create a recipe for these new savory flavors. Dum Dum's Lollipops are trying out their new savory flavors of bacon, pizza, and buttered popcorn that the public (that's you!) have been asking for. Spangler Candy Company is taking candy to a whole new level with these savory flavors, going where no candy company has gone before.

I remember when I was a kid growing up and all we had for lollipop flavors were cherry, grape, lemon, orange, pineapple, and root beer. So you can imagine my excitement when I was asked to create a recipe for these three savory flavors!

Since its summer (a hot & sizzling summer) I've had ice cream on my mind. And because bacon is all the rage right now (just ask they guys I work with, bacon goes with anything and everything), I've topped these ice cream cupcakes with crushed bacon lollipops!

I couldn't decide between peanut butter or chocolate, so I made them both! I mean, what doesn't go with peanut butter or chocolate? Right? Especially these bacon flavored lollipops!

By the way, I did try these ice cream cupcakes with the bacon lollipops (because I can't be sharing a recipe I have not tried) and I was amazed at how delicious they really are! You're in for a surprise, a good, yummy surprise!

A sweet and savory ice cream cupcake that will be the hit of your summer this year! And since 4th of July is coming up this week (yes, its that time of year already!) you have plenty of time to run to your local grocery store and grab all the ingredients so you can enjoy these ice cream cupcakes.

Best hurry up, Saturday will be here before ya know it and these bacon lollipops won't be around for long!

Ice Cream Cupcakes

Recipe by Julie Murphy

A sweet and savory easy to make ice cream cupcake.

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 0
Total time: 2-3 hours (includes freezing time)
Yield: 6 ice cream cupcakes
Ingredients

• 1 - 14.3 ounce package Oreo cookies
• 1 carton chocolate ice cream
• 1 carton caramel ice cream
• 1 carton banana ice cream
• 1 package cupcake baking cups
• 8 Dum Dum's Mystery flavor Bacon lollipops, crushed and with sticks removed

Directions

1. Place baking cups inside the cupcake pan. Set pan aside.
2. Twist 12 Oreo's apart, scraping off the filling with a butter knife. You can place Oreo filling into a small bowl to use in the future.
3. Place 1 chocolate Oreo wafer cookie into the bottom of each cupcake cup.
4. Place 1 scoop of ice cream (your choice of flavor) onto the chocolate wafer cookie.
5. Place another chocolate wafer cookie over the ice cream and gently squish down to fill out cupcake cup.
6. Place another scoop of ice cream over the chocolate wafer cookie and squish down, filling out the cupcake cup.
7. You should have 3 chocolate wafer cookies with 2 scoops of ice cream layered between them - chocolate cookie, ice cream, cookie, ice cream, cookie.
8. Place into your freezer.

Now its time to make the frosting.

Chocolate Mocha Cream Cheese Frosting - small batch

Recipe by Julie Murphy

A chocolate mocha cream cheese frosting that glides on easy and smoothly.

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 0
Total time: 40 minutes (includes chilling time for cream & instant coffee)
Yield: 2 cups
Ingredients

• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 packets instant coffee
• 4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 2 Tablespoons butter, room temperature
• 1 Tablespoon Dark cocoa powder
• 1 and 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Directions

1. In a small cup, mix together heavy cream and instant coffee. Place into refrigerator for about 30 minutes or until all coffee flakes are dissolved.
2. In a medium to large mixing bowl, mix together cream cheese, butter, and creamed coffee mix. Blend on medium to high speed.
3. Slowly add in powdered sugar and cocoa powder, mixing well. Blend on medium to high speed for another 45 to 60 seconds.
4. Frosting should be creamy with no lumps. If you have lumps, blend for a few seconds longer. You might have a few small lumps but that's ok.
5. After all ingredients are blended and no more lumps are noticeable, decorate cupcakes as desired.
6. Sprinkle with crushed bacon lollipops.
7. Place back into the freezer for at least 4 hours. Overnight is best so the cupcakes and frosting can set up.

Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting - small batch

Recipe by Julie Murphy

A peanut butter cream cheese frosting that glides on easy and smoothly.

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 0
Total time: 10 minutes
Yield: 2 cups
Ingredients

• 4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 Tablespoons butter, room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 Tablespoons creamy peanut butter
• 1 and 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Directions

1. In a medium to large mixing bowl, mix together cream cheese, butter, peanut butter, heavy cream, and vanilla. Blend on medium to high speed.
2. Slowly add in powdered sugar, mixing well. Blend on medium to high speed for another 45 to 60 seconds.
3. Frosting should be creamy with no lumps. If you have lumps, blend for a few seconds longer. You might have a few small lumps, but that's ok.
4. After all ingredients are blended and no more lumps are noticeable, decorate cupcakes as desired.
5. Sprinkle with crushed bacon lollipops.
6. Place back into the freezer for at least 4 hours. Overnight is best so the cupcakes and frosting can set up.

Disclaimer ~ I received no monies from Spangler Candy Company for this post. I only received Dum Dum's Lollipops to use for my recipe. All opinions and recipe are my own.

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs and link back to this post for original recipe.

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Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

I made these cupcakes with St. Patrick ’s Day in mind, with their beautiful, green cakes and a light vanilla buttercream frosting. I have been craving this frosting since I bought the green velvet cake mix (yes, craving something other than chocolate, surprising!).

As I was making these cupcakes, I realized the best part is the vanilla buttercream frosting. The delicate taste of this creamy, buttery, vanilla frosting upon these miniature green mounds was quite yummy! Vanilla buttercream frosting for breakfast….is it my birthday already? {smile}

If you haven’t gotten around to making your own buttercream frosting yet, you have got to try this recipe! Not only is it easy to make but it only calls for five ingredients – butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, salt, and half & half. As I’ve said before, it taste so much better than store bought versions. This recipe is adapted from Alice Currah's  Classic vanilla buttercream frosting recipe.

To be honest with you, this is the first time I’ve used my Kitchen Aid mixer that I got for Christmas! I know, I don’t know what took me so long to use it, but I absolutely, positively LOVE it <3

I’ve always mixed everything by hand growing up and just found it easier than bringing out a mixer…until today! I don’t know how I ever did without it! I found a little place on the counter for it so now it’s more readily accessible than sitting in that box in my bedroom!

So if you too are using your stand mixer, this frosting should take only five minutes to whip up and makes a serving size of 2 and half cups of frosting or 12 cupcakes. This vanilla buttercream frosting is great for decorating cakes and cupcakes.

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature *texture should be like ice cream*

2-3 cups powdered sugar, sifted

¼ teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

4 Tablespoons half & half (can also use heavy cream)

2-4 drops food coloring  *optional*

Directions

Place butter in mixing bowl and beat for a couple minutes with the paddle attachment on medium speed.

Slowly add 2 cups of powdered sugar to butter and mix on lowest speed (otherwise your powdered sugar will blow everywhere) until sugar is creamed thoroughly with butter.

Turn off mixer and add your vanilla, salt, and 2 Tablespoons of half and half. Beat at medium speed for 3 minutes.

*If you want thicker frosting, add remaining cup of sugar.

*If you want thinner frosting, slowly add remaining tablespoons of half and half until you achieve desired consistency.

*I also added a little food coloring to give my frosting a hint of green color for St. Patrick’s Day. You can add other colors too if you want colored frosting.

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs and link back to this post for original recipe.       

 

Easy Valentine Cupcakes

As I was walking through the aisle where the baking items are sold at my local store the other day, something caught my eye. I noticed Duncan Hines had something called Frosting Creations, where you buy a “frosting starter” and a “flavor mix” which came in a wide variety of flavors not normally seen in the frosting section. I have to say I was curious as to what this was all about so I bought a frosting starter and a couple of the flavor mixes, one in Black Cherry and the other in Strawberry Shortcake.

With Valentine’s Day coming up this week, I figured this would be a good time to try these out and see how they do. This was going to be an easy peasy recipe for cupcakes since it was all store bought instead of homemade.

I'm not including the directions with these since it's all there on the back of the box. Prep time for baking the cupcakes is 15-20 minutes and then allow for time to cool thoroughly before frosting. I baked my cupcakes the day before to ensure they would be cooled before frosting because if you frost while cupcakes are still warm, the frosting is difficult to apply because it keeps wanting to melt right off. You can always bake them in the morning before work and frost them when you get home, whatever works best for you to allow the cupcakes to cool thoroughly before frosting.

For the cupcake mix, I bought a white cake mix and prepared as directed. After I poured the mix into the cupcake cups, I put one drop of red food coloring in each cup mix and swirled it with a toothpick to get the red effect on the inside of the cake and baked as directed on the box and let cool.

For the frosting, I made as directed making a deep hole in the frosting starter and pouring in the black cherry flavor mix and blending well, making sure all the flavor mix was blended with the frosting. Once blended, the frosting came out as a dark pink, almost purple in color, with a light cherry taste.

Since I made 22 cupcakes, I quickly used up the black cherry frosting before all my cupcakes were frosted. Which was no problem because I had some white vanilla whipped frosting on hand and compared the ingredients of the frosting starter to that of the white vanilla frosting and realized they were basically the same thing. Luckily I had also bought the strawberry shortcake flavor mix, so I added it to the white frosting and ended up with a light pink creamy frosting with a touch of strawberry flavor.

I was impressed with how easy it was to make the signature flavor frostings and how different the coloring was than your normal over the shelf frostings of white, pink, and dark brown colors. Nowadays, you have flavors like cotton candy, white chocolate raspberry, pink lemonade, orange cream, pumpkin spice, and apple spice frosting to name just a few. Plus the colors come in a wide variety not normally seen on cupcakes and cakes such as green, blue, orange, and yellow. Frosting is not the same as when I was growing up! All we had was vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate frosting. Which is why baking is much more fun now with all the creative colors and flavor combinations!

Since these were going to be my Valentine’s Day cupcakes, I topped each one with a Hershey’s chocolate heart wrapped in pretty pink foil.

I call these my Easy Valentine Cupcakes for those of you who don’t have much time to make cupcakes but still want something that is low in cost, simple to make, looks pretty (with all the different colors), and tastes like you spent all day making them. Plus it gave me the opportunity to try out the frosting creations and let you know how they are. Let me know which flavors you try and how they turn out.

Here’s to wishing y’all a Happy Valentine’s Day!

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs. Or you can link back to this post for the recipe.