In Unison...

I love to bake. I like to bake, cookies, cakes, pies, muffins and whatever else I can think of. I have a rule of thumb; you either get flavor or presentation but usually not both. Specifically this means I tend to bake from scratch. I appreciate the process of starting with a bowl, adding flour and sugar, and making some spectacular creation. If it comes from a box, and I just add an egg, it’s not very enjoyable for me. Usually when baking from scratch, I don’t put a lot of thought into the beauty of the final product because so much effort has already gone into it.

On the other hand, I love to produce a beautiful work of art. I always thought I would enjoy being a culinary artist, but I don’t have the patience for the giant time-consuming creations I so often see on The Food Network. Every once in a while I attempt to make something that looks brilliant. For my brother-in-law’s birthday, I decided to make my version of the birthday cake cones that I’ve seen several times. The mix did indeed come from a box, but I knew I would spend a lot of time icing and sprinkling them, so presentation was the winner for the day.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, birthday cake cones are a mix between ice cream cones and cupcakes. I did a bit of research, and most recipes that I found suggested baking the cake batter in the ice cream cones. I was sort of leery of this, so I went with a less popular idea, which was making mini muffins of the cake batter, and then inserting the muffin into the unbaked cone. To my excitement, the muffins fit perfectly into the cones. I iced them as you would a cupcake, added sprinkles, and produced a quite scrumptious alternative to a typical birthday cake.

Suggestions:
• If you eat just one, you are consuming way less calories than a slice of cake or a regular-sized cupcake!
• Do bake mini cupcakes instead of baking cake in the cone. They fit perfectly in the cone, and you don’t have to worry about keeping the cones upright in the oven.
• If you wait to serve your cones too long, the cone itself will become stale and a bit soggy. If at all possible, put the cones together just before you are ready to serve them to preserve the crunch.
• Next time I might try adding ice cream to the bottom of the cone before adding the cupcake, etc.
• The nice thing about these is you can make them in any flavor and any color. The options are limitless! You could match the icing to your child’s school colors or someone’s wedding colors. You can make them all chocolate with a cherry on top or make carrot cake with cream cheese icing. You could make them for a baby shower with little baby duck sprinkles. You could even go as far as to dye the icing different colors and make a rainbow. Or you can go traditional, like I did, with chocolate cake, vanilla icing, colorful sprinkles, and a lit candle on top!

I tend to lean towards variety, but sometimes it’s nice to just have things in unison…