Foodie Fridays: Ice Cream Cake

Childhood birthday parties were not complete without my mom’s homemade ice cream cake. On my 16th birthday I remember she decided to shake things up a bit and buy me a slab cake from Safeway like all my friends had. She thought I would have outgrown my need for ice cream cake. But a kid never outgrows its need for family tradition. I told her as much but I never saw an ice cream cake again. So in an attempt to revive a long missed tradition I made an ice cream cake for my step-son’s 16th birthday. It turned out great and he even told me “I usually don’t like homemade cakes, but this one was awesome!”

So here’s how you do it. Keep in mind that this is a real cake and will not at all resemble a Dairy Queen ice cream “cake.” So if you are looking for a DQ substitute, keep on googling my friend. This is what we ate before DQ cakes came into fashion!

The beauty of making an ice cream cake is that you can decide on the type of cake  you want as well as the flavour of ice cream. For my step-son’s birthday I baked a chocolate cake and used raspberry cheesecake ice cream for the filling. My mom often made me an angel food cake and used strawberry or vanilla ice cream in the middle.

The following instructions will include the recipe for the chocolate cake I made (just as yummy on its own with rregular icing if you’re just passing through today and want a yumy moist chocolate cake recipe) and the directions for putting it all together.

Ice Cream Cake

Moist Chocolate Birthday Cake

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 cup plain yogurt

1/2 cup applesauce

1/2 cup sunflower oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease and flour two 8-inch round cake pans. 

Mix eggs, sugar, yogurt, applesauce, oil and vanilla until smooth. Sift int he flour, cocoa powder and baking soda. Stir until combined.

Divide batter equally into the two round prepared cake pans.

Bake the cakes for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out cleans. Cool cakes in their pans on racks for 10 minutes, then turn out cakes on racks to cool completely.

Once the cakes cool on the counter put them in the fridge to cool even more. Leave until cold (about 1 hour). 

Take the Cool Whip out of the freezer to defrost as you will need to spread this on the cake with a spatula. This can take at least half an hour.

Fifteen or twenty minutes before you are ready to put the cake together, put your ice cream on the counter to soften as you will need to be able to spread it on the cake with a spatula. If it is really frozen you might need to mix it up in the carton to make it spreadable, but there is a fine line between spreadable and runny and you don’t want it to be like a milkshake.

Once everything is ready you must work quickly!

Spread a 2 to 3 inch layer of ice cream between the cakes. Then “frost” the cake with Cool Whip. Immediately put in freezer to allow the ice cream to harden again. If you are good about the timing you can have the cake really cold, but not frozen and the ice cream back to its original state.

To cut the cake you will need to use a bread knife. This is a cake that needs to be sawed! If you have leftovers, they’ll be frozen solid. I suggest defrosting it in the microwave for about 30 seconds or leaving it on the counter to defrost for about 10 minutes before cutting. 

Not everyone will love a frozen cake but enough people have tried this (all my childhood friends over the years from age 5 to 15) that I think it’s worthy of a few thumbs up. If you want something a little faster that doesn’t require any baking, check out this one over at the blog of one of my favorite breastfeeding moms.

Related posts:

1. Foodie Fridays: Wild Blackberry Coffee Cake
2. Foodie Fridays: Vanilla Breast Milk Cupcakes With Strawberry Frosting
3. Foodie Fridays: Vegan Fudge Brownies
4. Foodie Fridays: Weird Food Combinations
5. Foodie Fridays: Simple Pleasures

Tags: dessert, Foodie Fridays, ice cream cake, recipe