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.

Pistachio Pudding Cupcakes

Mmm, pistachio. Pistachios are one of my favorite things in the world, scratch that. ANYTHING pistachio flavored are my favorite things in the world! Eat Live Run has created a super easy recipe that will have you enjoying pistachio cupcakes lickety split!

The recipe adapts a cake mix and transforms it with the addition of two boxes of instant pistachio pudding! One box for the cake, one box for the frosting! You can find the recipe here but be forewarned, this recipe is for pistachio lovers only!