Moist Funfetti Cupcakes made with Melted Pistachio Icecream and Cream Cheese Frosting

This recipe is inspired by my previous post, when I used melted ice cream to make key lime cream cheese filled bundt cake.  This time I decided to do little variation to recipe and make cupcakes. Yields about 30 cupcakes.

I always wanted to use the Funfetti cake mix, it has nice specks of colors perfect for birthday cake, so I decided to use this cake mix to make these cup cakes. You can use any yellow or white cake mix and can use any flavor of ice cream. Since I had left over ice cream from my previous recipe, I decided to use it.  However this time instead of using pistachio instant pudding, I used vanilla, but you can use either for this recipe.

Ingredients  

• 1 box of Funfetti cake mix (any brand)
• 1 ½ pint of pistachio ice cream melted
• 3 eggs
• 1/3  cup oil
• ½ cup mayonnaise
• 1 cup   sour cream
• 1 box of instant vanilla pudding mix

Following ingredients* are optional (you can omit putting the pistachios totally and garnish with something else like raspberries or colored sprinkles.  
* ½ cup of chopped pistachio nuts (unsalted lightly roasted) 
* ½ cup of crushed, chopped or whole pistachio for garnishing.

For Frosting: 

• One container of ready made cream cheese frosting
• 1 pack of  8 oz  cream cheese
• ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract

Please note that I only frosted 20 cupcakes and froze the rest, this frosting was enough to frost the 18 cup cakes. If you like to frost all of them you will need to make additional frosting.

Method

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• Line muffin pan with paper liners.
• Beat the eggs, melted ice cream, eggs, sour cream, oil and mayonnaise in a mixer.

• Add cake mix and vanilla pudding mix.
• Beat on medium-high speed until batter is smooth and not lumpy.
• Fold in crushed pistachios.

• Fill the batter in muffin cups filling up to 2/3 of paper cup.
• Bake at 350 F until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean (~35 min)
• Let the baked cupcakes cool for 10 minutes
• Remove the cupcakes to the rack to cool completely.

Prepare frosting in the meantime as follows:

•  Whisk the softened cream cheese and ready made frosting together until smooth.
• May add vanilla extract or for variation can add juice of one fresh lime in this frosting to further cut down the sweetness and this will give key lime taste to the frosting.

• Pipe the frosting into frosting dispenser.
• Frost the cupcake to your desired pattern.
• Top with crushed pistachios or place one or two pistachio on each cupcake.

 

Recipe and Photographs by Surekha