Vanilla cake baked into ice cream cones with a swirl of buttercream. Perfect for kids of all ages!
I’ve been wanting to try this one for a long, long time, ever since I saw them online last year when searching for ideas for my son’s birthday cake. I got the recipe from BBC Good Food (ever reliable!).
I used flat-bottomed ice cream cones, but I have seen other recipes which use pointy-end cones (technical term there)… but they’re a bit trickier to make and I’m all about convenience 🙂
I chose a vanilla cake recipe, but there’s nothing to stop you filling your cones with a different flavoured cake mix.
Ingredients (fills 12 flat-bottomed cones)
- 12 flat-bottomed ice cream cones
- 200 g / 7 oz butter/margarine
- 200 g / 7 oz plain flour
- 4 tbsp custard powder (this gives the cake that “vanilla ice cream flavour”)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 200 g / 7 oz caster sugar
- 2 eggs
Method
Put your 12 flat-bottomed ice cream cones into a muffin tin, standing one cone in each of the holes. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees C / Gas Mark 4 / 350 degrees F.
If you have an electric mixer or electric hand beaters, put the butter, flour, custard powder, vanilla, sugar and eggs in a bowl and beat the ingredients together until you have a smooth paste.
If you are mixing by hand, I would recommend beating together the butter and sugar first. Then add the vanilla and eggs, beating them until combined. Then finally add the flour and custard powder.
Spoon the cake batter into a piping bag. If you don’t have one, get a freezer bag and cut the corner off to leave a hole about 2 cm wide. Squeeze the batter into the ice cream cones, making sure it hits the bottom of each cone. Fill the cones about three quarters full so you leave space for them to rise while baking. I think I filled mine a little too much.
Bake your ice cream cone cakes for about 30 minutes until a knife inserted into them comes out clean. I must admit I had to bake them for longer than 30 minutes. I turned the oven down to 150 degrees C and left them in another 10 minutes to make sure the cake was cooked through. It will all depend on your oven. As you’ll see from the next picture, my cakes rose over the top of the ice cream cones, which is why I think I put a little too much cake batter into each ice cream cone.
If his happens to you, you have 2 options: 1 – cut the cake which is over the top of the cone off; 2 – use your buttercream icing to disguise this extra rise. I went with option 2!
While you cakes are cooling, make your buttercream. Beat together 250 g / 10 oz icing sugar and 125 g / 5 oz butter. If you have an electric mixer/beaters, let them do the hard work but remember that without a guard the icing sugar will fly everywhere! If the resulting buttercream is too stiff to pipe, add a little milk to loosen the mixture.
Put your buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a star tip and pipe swirls of buttercream onto your ice cream cone cakes.
You might have noticed in the pictures there’s one sneaky pink ice cream cone cake! I had some raspberry flavoured buttercream in the freezer left over from another bake, so I used it up. Obviously you can flavour your buttercream however you like: chocolate, strawberry, mint, coffee… For chocolate, just add 50 g of melted plain or dark chocolate to the above quantities of icing sugar and butter when mixing.
Finally I added some sugar sprinkles and a small piece of Cadbury’s flake to complete the ice cream look 🙂
Another picture just to prove these are cakes. Honest!
And if you’re looking for other cakes for kids of all ages:
Chocolate orange butterfly buns. Cupcake + Jaffa Cakes = foolproof delicious recipe.
Chocolate shredded wheat nests with mini chocolate eggs. You see this one around a lot at Easter, but they’re easy to make and tasty at any time of the year 🙂
Claire Huston / Art and Soul
My kids would LOVE these! x
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They are so cute and would go down a storm at any children’s party 🙂
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Absolute genius x
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When I first saw the idea last year I thought it might be a joke, but it really does work! I’ll do some chocolate cake ones in future 🙂 x
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What a great idea!
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I wish I could take credit. It’s such a terrific one for kids 🙂
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It really is 🙂
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They look so adorable! 🙂
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Thank you! For my first attempt, I was really pleased with how they turned out 🙂
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These look lovely
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Thank you 🙂 I was pleased with them and I think I’ll try chocolate cake next time!
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Great idea! I haven’t seen these before!
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I hadn’t seen them until late last year, but I knew I’d have to make them! It’s taken me a while but I’m glad I did it. They’re surprisingly easy to make 🙂
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I’m going to try these!
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Yay! I hope they turn out well for you. The key thing is about the oven temperature and perhaps having to turn the oven down/off and leave them in the heat a little longer to make sure they cook through to the centre. Everyone’s oven seems to cook things at different speeds, even when they’re all set to the same temperature 🙂
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You have taken me back to my childhood right here! I remember bringing things like this into the classroom in April for my birthday in elementary school. We used to use multicolored cones and sprinkles and they were a beautiful concoction. I would have eaten about 20 of them if I was allowed to.
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Oh that’s lovely 🙂 I wish we’d come up something this creative when I was at school. The best we managed were butterfly buns!
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What are butterfly buns?
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You make ordinary cupcakes (which, when I was growing up in the UK we always called “buns”), you slice off the top and cut it in half to make two wings. Put a blob of buttercream on the top of the cupcake and stick the wings on. Here’s the link to one of my recipes for them with photos: https://clairehuston.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/cute-butterfly-cupcakes-perfect-for-kids-of-all-ages/ 🙂
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Oh those are adorable! I love them! 🙂 So cute!
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Oh what a fabulous idea! Such a good idea for a small party, and they sound quite simple xx
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I was surprised with how easy they were to make, and now I’ve done them following this recipe, I think I’ll use my chocolate sponge recipe next time. The custard powder makes the cake a little too “vanilla-y” for my taste. But I think kids will love them 🙂 xx
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Yum!
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Thank you! They turned out well 🙂
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When we first opened our store, we gave away those. They were a hit!
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I can’t believe I’d never seen them before I was looking around for children’s cake ideas last year. They’re so lovely and not as hard to make as I think most people would think 🙂
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Seriously, how many times am I allowed to like this post – I love these! 🙂
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Thank you! 🙂 I was really pleased with them. For a first attempt, they turned out well. I’d love to do a new batch with different flavoured cakes and icing.
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They’re absolutely gorgeous and such a brilliant idea!
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Oh my gosh, that looks delicious!!
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Thank you! They are so cute. I can’t wait to make them for a children’s party 🙂 (bet the adults like them more than the kids, haha!)
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You’re welcome! They are cute 🙂 I’m sure everyone will enjoy them!
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They look Amazing!
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Thank you! For a first attempt, I was very pleased. Off to have another one in a minute 🙂
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LOVE! Awesome job with these!
I’ve always wanted to try to make these, but wasn’t always sure how it was actually done. I’ll definitely have to give it a try now. 🙂
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Hooray! I hope it goes well. I honestly think any cake batter would work, so if you prefer chocolate cake, I’d suggest giving that a try. It’s what I’m going to try next 🙂
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Yum. Just yum!
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Thank you! There’s only one left now 🙂
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Oh my yum! My mouth waters.
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Thank you 🙂 They were very nice!
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This is perfection. Ice cream cones are too cold for me (haha, damn teeth), but replace it with cake and I’m in heaven!
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This is indeed perfect for you! They’re easier than you’d think to make as well and they look really convincing 🙂
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Those are so cute
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Thank you! I was really pleased with how they turned out. Chocolate next time 🙂
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My sisters and I have been trying to bake but we just mess up everytime! (And we don’t know what the problem seems to be!!) Lol. But these look so cute! 🙂
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Thank you! I hope you have better luck. Lots can go wrong! When weighing, how you combine things, cooking temperature… It can be quite tricky!
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We sometimes end up fighting because the other thinks the other weigh it wrong or the other would complain on how slow we work so by the time get to the actual baking we’re all irritated. But baking with 3 sisters who all want to do everything is fun!
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They look so adorable! What a genius idea! ❤ Did they taste as good as they look?
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Personally, I think I would have preferred chocolate cake to contrast with the taste of the ice cream cone wafer. This cake recipe is good in so much that the custard powder does make the sponge taste really vanilla-y and so like ice cream, but I’d prefer chocolate 🙂
I wish I could track down the first person to have this idea because it is brilliant!
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Pingback: WWW Wednesday 6th July 2016 | Art and Soul
Ahh-haa, I feel another baking adventure for me. How simple is this? Well done, my son would simply love this. Thanks for sharing.
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Thank you!
My son had a great time rolling the dough and then pushing the sweets into the centre of the biscuits. The only struggle was stopping him “sampling” the Smarties 🙂
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I know I’ll have the same issue, especially with the “sampling” of the smarties😂
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Reblogged this on Limin'N'Stylin' in Toronto and commented:
Next on the baking trial agenda of Moi…..
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