Strawberry Ice Cream Cupcakes

1. Stage

Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper or foil cupcake liners. Take the ice cream out of the freezer for 10 minutes to soften enough to make it easy to scoop.

2. Stage

Using a serrated knife, cut the pound cake into 6 slices, each about 3/4-inch thick. Using a round cookie cutter, cut 12 rounds from the cake slices. Put a cake round in each muffin cup. (If you don't have a cookie cutter, find a glass that's the right size, and use it as a guide as you cut the rounds with a paring knife. You want the cake rounds to fit in the bottoms of the muffin cups.)

3. Stage

Drop 1/2 teaspoon of strawberry jam onto each cake round. Using a 2-inch ice cream scoop, scoop 12 balls of ice cream, dropping them into the muffin cups as you scoop. The scoops should be large enough to peek out over the tops of the muffin cups. Put the muffin tin in the freezer to allow the ice cream to firm up again, at least 20 minutes or up to 2 hours.

4. Stage

Place a metal mixing bowl and the beaters from your electric mixer in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. Pour the cream and confectioners' sugar into the chilled bowl. Using an electric mixer on medium speed, begin whipping the cream until it gets very foamy. Turn the mixer up to medium-high speed and beat the cream until it forms medium-firm peaks.

5. Stage

Remove the muffin tin from the freezer. Gently spoon the whipped cream into a large ziplock bag, remove any excess air, seal the bag, and squeeze the cream over to one side. Snip a small corner off the side of the bag where the cream is, and gently squeeze the bag to pipe the whipped cream on top of each cupcake to resemble frosting. Start around the outer edges and swirl up in the middle. Decorate the tops with sprinkles, if desired, then place the muffin tin back in the freezer until the whipped cream firms up, about 45 minutes. Remove the cupcakes from the freezer about 5 minutes before serving.