Toddler cooking (8): ice cream cone cupcakes

I've wanted to make these for ages and Iz's first birthday seemed to be the perfect opportunity.

We cheated and used a box mix for ease and to save time but you could use any cake recipe. The one we used was Betty Crocker Devil Food cake and this is what we did:

Crack the eggs

Whisk eggs

Add the oil

Mix well

Insert cones into upside down foil trays to keep them upright

Fill just over 2/3 full with cake mix

Bake in the oven according to box instructions (these took about 15-20 mins)

Stand in a ramekin to decorate (sprinkles mandatory!)

Mmmmm cone cupcakes :)

When you cut one open

How cute are they? I love the novelty of them, D loved that he was "eating an ice cream" and it's awesome that you can eat the whole thing with no rubbish to dispose of afterwards :)

This was his face about 3 minutes post immunisation - the healing power of a cone cupcake!!

Top tips:

- I'd read in lots of places that using a ziploc bag as a piping bag was easy. This may be true for adults/older kids but is definitely not true for toddlers! I love how hard D concentrated doing it but halfway through I took it away from him and he used a teaspoon to fill the cones instead - waaaaaay easier!

- I think these are probably best made on the day of or one day before they're needed. Ours kept fine for 4-5 days in a Tupperware but they obviously sweated a bit so the cones weren't as crisp.

- definitely use foil trays upside with cut-outs (as in pics above) when cooking. If you try and just stand them in a muffin tin the likelihood is some (or most of you're unlucky!) will fall over as they are cooking. Or you could fill each muffin compartment with lentils or something to wedge around the cones. Whatever you do, don't just stand them on a baking tray!!

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What do you think? Gimmicky or cute? They are definitely something we're going to make again and again :)