Happy National Chocolate Ice Cream Day cupcakes

It's National Chocolate Ice Cream Day, which is fitting since is the year of Cupcakes and Ice Cream. It's also a good time to tell you that Cupcake Project and Scoopalicious are holding their annual Ice Cream Cupcake Contest - enter by June 30th! The cupcake below was an entry in the 2011 contest. It's a Fudgy Pistachio-Chocolate Malted Cupcake by Leah, using chocolate and pistachio ice cream!





For the bacon lovers, Stephanie of 52 Kitchen Adventures made a bacon chocolate ice cream cupcake (!!). It was a finalist in the 2010 Ice Cream Cupcake Contest and she writes: "The sprinkle of fleur de sel and bacon pieces on top adds a nice balance of salty to the sweet buttercream. Plus the little chunks of chocolate covered bacon provides bursts of salty flavor to break up the rich chocolate of the cake and ice cream." This one has Chocolate sorbet with chocolate covered bacon chips inside!



And on the cupcake/ice cream connection, thanks to Cocoa Van Cupcake of Memphis, Tennessee, whose Facebook page is where I found out it's National Chocolate Ice Cream Day! I don't have a photo of their cupcakes with chocolate ice cream, so here is their tiramisu cupcake with Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream. Their cupcake flavors today are: coconut, sharland apple, two snaps up, lemon, foxy brown, red vel, van, cocoa, carmela.