Ice Cream Cupcakes

Boo loves cupcakes.

What does Boo love even more than cupcakes?

Ice cream. Vanilla ice cream.

So I decided to make ice cream cupcakes for her birthday.
Brownie on the bottom.

A thick layer of ganache.

Vanilla ice cream topped with raspberry truffles and blueberries.

Yum.

And yum.

Here it is:

BROWNIES:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
8 tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
3 oz. unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk
1 1/8 cups sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2/3 cup chocolate chips (or more...you can't have too many chocolate chips in your brownies)

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside. In a double boiler, combine the butter and chocolate and melt (stirring occasionally) until nice and smooth. In a large mixing bowl whisk together the eggs, egg yolk, sugar and vanilla extract. Stir in the warm chocolate mixture, and then the dry ingredients, mixing just until incorporated. Line cupcake pans with FOIL liners. Scoop 1 tablespoon (or 1 1/2 TB if you like a higher brownie to ice cream ratio...which I do) of batter into cupcake liner. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs attached, 6-8 minutes. Leave the brownies in the pan and cool on a wire rack until room temperature. Then stick the pan in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.

GANACHE:
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup heavy cream

Place the chocolate chips in a small bowl. Heat the cream to a simmer, then pour over the chocolate chips and let stand for a couple of minutes. Then stir it all up til it's nice and smooth (pop it in the microwave for 15 seconds if it's still lumpy).

Pull the cupcake/brownies out of the freezer (still keep them in the cupcake pan) and put a dollop of ganache on each. Pop them back in the freezer for another 30 minutes. You won't use all the ganache - you will need the rest for the raspberry truffles.

ICE CREAM:
Homemade ice cream would be really great. But we used Breyer's Homemade Vanilla...the only brand of store bought vanilla allowed in this house. (For the record, J and Boo are the vanilla ice cream lovers. If it were me, I would top those babies with Graeters Black Raspberry Chip). I took the brownie cupcakes out of the pan and plopped a scoop of only-a-little-soft ice cream on top of the ganached brownie. Then I smoothed the top with a knife til it looked like a frosted cupcake. Put the cupcake right in the freezer (on a large baking sheet) as soon as you have smoothed the ice cream down. Then do the next one. I let them all freeze for about 30 minutes, then added the raspberry truffles and blueberries.

RASPBERRY TRUFFLES:
Rinse the raspberries and lay them on some paper towels to dry. Using a piping bag (or just a ziploc bag with one corner cut off) and a large open tip to pipe ganache into the middle of the raspberries. Freeze the truffles on a baking sheet.

**This made 18 cupcakes, but I put a bit more than 1 TB of batter in each cupcake liner**

Adapted from Annie's Eats: Strawberry Ice Cream Brownie Cupcakes.