Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans! This seemed like a fitting treat for today and to kick of Ice Cream Month. This recipe is a little time consuming since there are different components but it’s not hard.

You start off by making the cupcakes, which is pretty easy since you’re using a box mix. I went ahead and scooped the white cupcakes into the liners and then used that same bowl to do one of the colors. The blue turned out really nice, but as I suspected my red was more of a pink color. You bake those and then let them cool before doing anything else with them.

Next you’ll make the ice cream batter by putting 2 cups of heavy whipping cream into the mixer and mixing until soft peaks form. While you’ve got that mixing stir together the sweetened condensed milk, vanilla extract, and vanilla pudding mix. This is where things too a bit of a turn as I crumbled in 1 of each of the cupcakes (and sprinkles) and then mixed it together. Maybe it’s supposed to look messy and if so then I did it right, but the blue in particular made it very weird looking. You carefully mix in the whipping cream mixture and that did help make it look less weird.

Pour part of the mixture into a lined metal loaf pan, sprinkle some of each of the cupcakes on top, sprinkles, and I added a few red/blue M&M’s, as well. Pour the rest of the mixture into the pan and again sprinkle some of the cupcakes, sprinkles, and I added a few more M&M’s for good measure.

Side note: I could not find 4th of July inspired sprinkles anywhere so I had to make due with Superhero sprinkles (which I didn’t even know was a thing), so that’s why mine look a little different.

Wrap the whole thing up and pop it into the freezer. You can make the cones whenever, but you’ll want to let them harden a little so keep that in mind. I totally missed the fact that this called for red, white, and blue candy melts and I only grabbed white ones and then tried to use food coloring to create the other colors. This was a mistake and they looked weird so I just coated them in sprinkles and figured that was good enough.

All in all, this is pretty easy to make, just a little time consuming. Mine certainly wasn’t as pretty as what’s on the recipe but it was festive looking. Other than being cold, it didn’t really feel like ice cream though and taste was it was ok. The kids loved it but if you’re looking for traditional ice cream this might not be for you.

Baking Ease	10
Time Spent	8
Taste	7
Visual	8

Recipe Used: A Sparkle of Genius