'Mr Whippy' for winter

When it's too cold for real ice-cream but the wee ones want a cone , we will be turning to our 'Mr Whippy' style cupcakes.

Mr Whippy is a long held treasure in NZ.

I made a simple sponge cake batter and buttercream from scratch but you can just buy a packet of your favourite cake mix and use that instead, you also buy the buttercream icing premade and make it really easy on yourself.

I am keeping things simple and all vanilla as these are intended for mostly under two's at an activity club. So hopefully it'll just be sugar rush and no other side effects!

A huge hit in this house :)

To make about 15 cones

15 flat bottomed wafer ice-cream cones
3 oz butter
4 oz caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
5 oz self-raising flour
2 tbsp milk (full fat)

Cream the butter and sugar together until it is fluffy and pale coloured, get as much air in as you can. Beat in one egg well, make sure it is incorporated well before adding the next egg. Beat well again.
Add the vanilla extract and mix well.
Add the flour and milk in batches, not all at once, beating all together so that you end up with a nice smooth batter.
Spoon the mixture into the cones so that the mixture falls all the way to the bottom of the cone and you fill it up to just over half way.
Bake the cones spaced out on a baking tray at 180 degrees celsius for around 15-20 minutes until they have risen well and you can test with a skewer to see it comes out cleanly.

Allow the cakes to cool on a rack before piping on a swirl of buttercream icing.

Buttercream icing - I used
3 1/2 oz softened unsalted butter
Approx 65 ml milk (you might need more if the icing is too dry and difficult to pipe)
1 tsp vanilla extract
12 oz icing sugar

Cream the butter. Do this for a few minutes so that it really fluffs up, air incorporation is the key here. Beat in the milk, the vanilla extract and half of the icing sugar (sifted in). It should be a fairly loose icing now. Continue by adding the rest of the sugar and beating well, you should have a spreadable/pipable consistency now. If it's too thick use a little more milk, if it's still too loose add more sugar, carefully (I often need differing amounts with different batches of icing). It's best just to have extra milk and extra icing sugar on hand to keep tinkering until you are happy.

You can add colours and flavours (omit vanilla and replace) if you like