I loves me some fancy hot drinks, but sometimes a girl needs ice cream. What to do?
It's a single serving ice cream cake that's made to look like a nice warm mug of coffee, and yes, I invented it. Go on, be impressed.
First, I baked cupcakes in mugs. It's just like making cupcakes except you put an assortment of mugs onto a cookie sheet instead of using a cupcake pan. I put ¼ cup of batter into each mug; after baking, the mugs (depending on size) were anywhere from ¼ to ¾ full of cake.
After the cake cooled, I smooshed some softened ice cream into each mug as the next layer. I left about half an inch at the top, then put it all into the freezer to get good and frozen before I started decorating.
Have you ever heard of cappuccino art? It's when a barista creates designs in your drink using nothing more than espresso and super foamy steamed milk...and sometimes a bit of chocolate. That's the idea I was going for. After a bit of experimenting, I managed to get a pretty design by putting down a thick layer of ganache, splashing a small puddle of cream into the middle, then very quickly pulling the cream into the ganache with a pointy thing. Since that probably didn't make any sense, here's a video:
Will I be making this again? Absolutely! Should you try it? Is that even a question? There are so many fun variations you can make here. Mine was chocolate cake with caramel macchiato ice cream and chocolate ganache; I think an apple cake with cinnamon ice cream and caramel syrup would be nice for fall.
For you pumpkin spice latte fanatics, you could layer pumpkin spice cake with coffee ice cream and a pretty swirl of whipped cream. Oh, and did I mention it's a great dessert to take in your work lunchbox? Well, if there's a freezer in your work fridge...and no sneaky dessert-stealing coworkers nearby.
So what's next? Let's go seasonal in October's Cake of the Month Challenge: the theme is Fall.
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