Who Needs Carvel? Make Your Own Ice Cream Cupcakes!

Not that Carville!

In the gluten free world, good cakes are hard to come by. Yes, I am well aware that a lot of mainstream cake mix brands are now churning out GF cake mixes and I sincerely appreciate the effort. Actually, for my last birthday Andre made me a yellow cake from the King Arthur brand. It was so tasty that I ate it for breakfast for three days straight. Best breakfast you shouldn't be eating! However, GF cakes are still pretty crumbly and the texture is somewhat off from the gluten filled varieties.  Piggy-backing on the theme of my last post in which I told you that my sister is basically a gluten free saint, for her birthday last week, she decided to forgo a traditional birthday cake this year and instead let me try out a new recipe for none other than GF Ice Cream Cupcakes!

You devil you

I fracken love ice cream cakes and despite being made of ice cream they are not gluten free because of the crunchy bottom layer made from chocolate cookie crumbs. Damn you Carvel! Well I figured that it would be pretty easy to make a gluten free version. Plus, sometimes it's just better to have a cupcake. Single serving. All to yourself. Cupcakes rule.  All I needed to de-glutenify this recipe was gluten free chocolate sandwich cookies. I know Trader Joe's has a GF version of their Joe's Os now. But I actually opted for a brand I found at Shaw's - actually one of my favorite GF brands (and the most ridiculous to spell. But it's Canadian, so I'll cut them some slack.) called Kinnikinnick. Despite these Oreo-like cookies coming in at a whopping $6 a package, they made a perfect ice cream cupcake crust.

Now, for the ice cream portion of the cupcakes you have a lot of GF options to choose from. Barring any ice creams that contain cake pieces, brownie pieces, or cookies pieces, I would say most ice cream is gluten free. But always check the label just to be sure.  Now for Andre's birthday cupcakes, I decided to crank up the difficulty factor and do a Neapolitan version.  For some reason, Neapolitan ice cream is a new favorite in the Dumas household. The three flavor combo is just the best of three worlds to both of us and while years ago I would have absolutely died if you tried to make me eat strawberry ice cream, now I kind of love it!

All in all these are a pretty easy, no bake dessert option. I made it about 10 times harder by doing a Neapolitan version, but if you used just one flavor of ice cream the process is super simple.   So...onward Christian solider!

Neapolitan Ice Cream Cupcakes

You will need:

Package of GF chocolate sandwich cookies - I used about 6 to 8 cookies to make 6 ice cream cupcakes. You can average about 1 cookie per crust. 

2T of melted butter

ice cream 

icing (optional)

Start by crushing GF cookies in a mixing bowl. I don't currently own a food processor, but man that would have been handy. However, I ended up using my potato masher and after a great upper body workout, my cookies were crushed!

Then add melted butter and combine.  Cookies should be to the consistency that when you press them down that they hold together. 

Fill cupcake pan with cupcake liners and press cookies into each liner up to about a half of an inch.  

Remove ice cream from freezer and soften for a few minutes.  You can also speed up the process by scooping out the ice cream and manically stirring it till it is the consistency of soft serve ice cream. That's the route I chose. I have patience problems no doubt.  Spoon softened ice cream into cups and then spread into an even layer. Place back into freezer (about 10 minutes or so) to harden and then you can add some icing if you want to.  

Make your own soft serve ice cream!

Now for this Neapolitan version, I had to make three separate layers - one chocolate, one vanilla, and one strawberry. So what I did was cut out each flavor from the carton and do the whole melting thing one flavor at a time. You'll need to make sure the previous flavor has stiffened up enough in the freezer that you can build the next layer on top. This takes some extra time but left me with that cool layered effect and the possibility of getting one bite where all flavors were represented. Amazing! 

Originally I wanted to try out the cool new Cool Whip Icing that is currently out now, but I had a senior moment at the grocery store and totally forgot it.  So I ended up just using traditional cake frosting and it was pretty tasty.  Next go round I'm definitely going to give the Cool Whip a whirl. 

Be prepared to eat these little delights real fast, as they tend to melt really quickly.  But they were insanely delicious and a great way to ring in Andre's 27 years.

For my next post, bring on the sweaters and boots. It's officially fall and everyone has gone pumpkin crazy, including me. I'll be tackling Pumpkin Mac and Cheese.