Hazelnut Crunch Cupcake From Donatella

Last week a fellow food blogger invited me to lunch at Donatella, a Napoletana pizza place in Chelsea owned by Donatella Arpaia. The pizzas were great, but since this is a blog about cupcakes, I have to tell you about this golden cupcake. It's a hazelnut crunch cupcake with Devil's food cake with chocolate hazelnut cream center, hazelnut praline buttercream and toasted hazelnuts. It was delicious! Also I would be remiss in not mentioning that the rainbow cookie ice cream sandwich at Donatella was just named the best ice cream sandwich in New York City. It is almond-flavored with a thin layer of bittersweet ganache that gives the sandwich a touch of chocolate flavoring, these red, white and green cakes surround a homemade vanilla gelato topped with just a touch of strawberry rhubarb jam.

Red velvet waffle cones, red velvet cupcake topping, cupcake ice cream sandwiches, root beer floats and more at Sprinkles Ice Cream grand opening today in Beverly Hills

I'll share more soon about why the hot cupcake trend of 2012 is cupcakes and ice cream, with bakeries incorporating ice cream into their shops in all sorts of ways, but right now I want to tell you about today's Beverly Hills opening at 10 a.m. of Sprinkles Ice Cream, located at 9631 South Santa Monica Boulevard, adjacent to the original Sprinkles Cupcakes bakery and the 24-hour Sprinkles Cupcake ATM. Their website says national shipping is coming soon. You can get a root beer float, various flavors of ice cream (see below), and an ice cream sandwich where the ice cream is sandwiched between cupcakes or a red velvet waffle cone. You can follow them at @sprinklesicecrm on Twitter for the latest news. Their hours are Thursday-Saturday 10-11 and Sunday-Wednesday 10-10, and they can be reached at icecream at sprinkles.com or 310-274-7890. If anyone visits this week and wants to write a guest post about it, email us at cupcakestakethecake at gmail.com with "Guest Post" in the subject line.

These photos are from Sprinkles Ice Cream's Facebook page, where I learned:

Keeping with Sprinkles modern aesthetic, architect Andrea Lenardin designed a new take on the old fashioned scoop shop. Sprinkles Ice Cream is blanketed with white corian and penny tile offset by rich pops of red. While “chilling” on the spacious indoor-outdoor bench, ice cream enthusiasts will delight in decoding Thomas Jefferson’s ice cream recipe inked onto the overhead rotunda.

Here are the ice cream flavors they're offering: banana, butter pecan, cap'n crunch, cherry vanilla, chocolate chip, chocolate sorbet (dairy free), coffee, coffee almond fudge, dark chocolate, malted milk chocolate, mint chip, peanut butter, pistachio, Sprinkles Red Velvet, rocky road, salty caramel, strawberry, strawberry sorbet (dairy free), triple chocolate, vanilla bean. Cookie flavors are: chocolate chip, double chocolate, peanut butter pretzel chip, salted oatmeal cornflake, snickerdoodle, fudge brownie.

From their Facebook page, here's how to make a


Sprinkles red velvet ice cream


they offer sauces including salted butterscotch, hot fudge or chocolate crackle


dark chocolate ice cream


cupcake ice cream sandwich


red velvet waffle cones


root beer float


pirate cupcakes from the Sprinkles Facebook page, so cupcakes don't feel left out of this post

In other Sprinkles news, their Cupcake ATM photo contest ends May 31st!