Homemade Chocolate & Peppermint Ice Cream Cake Disaster!

Have you ever made an ice cream cake before?  Well, I never had, until now.

My daughter turned 11 a few days ago and she requested an ice cream cake for her “kid” birthday party.  I made a confetti cake for the “family” birthday party a few days prior which turned out pretty good, so thought I’d try something different the second time around.

The Ice Cream Cake Concept

My idea for making an ice cream cake was simple.

1. Bake the cake
2. While it’s cooling on the rack, line one of the cleaned cake pans with a large piece of plastic wrap (large enough so it’s hanging over the sides for easy in lifting it out of the pan).
3. Freeze the ice cream for 3 or 4 hours.
4. Pop the ice cream out of the cake pan.
5. Build ice cream cake – cake, ice cream, cake.
6. Frost cake.
7. Put completed cake in the freezer until ready to eat!

And it would look like this…

The Ice Cream Cake Reality

Like I said, I was really short on time when I got around to making the cake.  I had worked a ton of hours that week, including a bunch of overtime to get my desk ready for vacation.  So by the time I found the time, it was the night before the party. Ack! And just my luck, it had been a hot day so the house warmed up to 85 degrees!  Not a good time to make an ice cream cake! Then my stubborn lovely daughter had a slightly different idea for making the cake.  Actually, this was good because I’ve been trying really hard to let her be more creative in the kitchen, so I let go of the “mom reins” and we followed her idea.

My daughter’s idea was very close to mine, however, she wanted to scoop out the middle portions of each cake round, making them “hollow” so when assembled, there was only ice cream in the very middle of the cake.

It was a great idea, but sounded a bit tricky.

Sure enough, it was a near-disaster!  After putting the bottom cake piece on a plate, then scooping out the innards to make a “bowl” and filling it with ice cream, the challenge was to know how much ice cream to add to the hollowed out top cake round. Plus the top cake round was rather flimsy at this point, so I had to hold it with both hands while my daughter filled it up with ice cream. We decided to add more ice cream than it looked like it needed, just for good measure (there’s NO such thing as too much ice cream!), then carefully flipped the top cake round over and on top of the bottom one.

Whew!  We did it!

I frosted the cake as quickly as I could, but the ice cream was melting just a tad in one spot, seeping through the frosting.  After I finished frosting it, my daughter quickly threw some sprinkles on it and I put it in our deep freezer.

The next day, here’s what it looked like…

And after we cut into it…

NOT the most attractive cake is it?  Surprisingly the kids all LOVED it and said it tasted GREAT, better than the store bought ones!

Music to my ears!

I learned a few things while making this cake:

1. Make it two days prior
2. Freeze the cake sections after they have cooled, making for easier cake assembly and not causing the cake to be concave.

All in all, it was great fun to make and it really did taste VERY good, as the kids said.

Have you ever made an ice cream cake?  I need more tips for a more pleasing looking cake!  Do tell!!!