Ice Cream & Cake

For his birthday, my lovely husband likes ice cream cake. He's a summer birthday, just about the time of year that ice cream is necessary.

A couple of years ago, I spent an amazing amount of money on a ridiculously small ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. The girl at the counter kindly offered to write on it, but who knows where the writing would have gone, and how small it would need to be!

I was kind of sour on the whole thing. (At the time I did not know that Albertson's sells them, but there are only two of us anyway so a cake is bound to last.)

Then Real Simple comes along with blah blah making an ice cream cake is so easy! And you know what? It is. And it only cost around $8, all things considered.

Step 1: Bake the cake. I used a regular chocolate mix in my 9" springform pan. The springform is key, because it makes for easy assembly.

Step 2: When the cake is cool, unhinge the cake and split it. Take off the top half, and rehinge the pan around the bottom half.

Step 3: Set some ice cream out to soften. Spread it to the edges of the pan on the bottom half of the cake. You might want to consider melting a light layer of chocolate on the bottom half of the cake so it doesn't get soggy while you're adding the ice cream, but it's not really necessary. I used almost a whole carton of Breyer's chocolate, minus an enormous glop on the floor. Whoops.

Step 4: Drop the top half of the cake back in, and throw the whole thing in the freezer. No need to cover it, although you might want to later if it's going to be a while.

Step 5: Frost the cake however you see fit. I just did the top with some plain buttercream so I could leave the sides of the pan on in the freezer.


A funny thing to notice: the cake shrinks way more than the ice cream will in the freezer. You could always cover that up with frosting. Don't worry; the cake and frosting doesn't get weird when it's frozen.


I'm not a big fan of ice cream cake. I don't like the ice cream melting and making the cake all soggy. But it's honestly just like Baskin Robbins. So plan ahead and experiment with your own ice cream cake.