We've got two of 'em now . . .

In double digits!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEN!

Ben requested an ice cream cake this year and for some reason I instantly considered making it myself...(-:...rather than buying one. I googled around a little bit for tips and hints and boy, did this turn out easy and delicious.

One

Two

Three

And done, no problem!

So, I made two 9" round cakes, cooled completely and frosted the bottom layer (use a healthy amount of whipped frosting, it's great frozen). Stacked the layers and put them in the freezer for about five hours (one site said freeze them overnight, mine worked fine though also, I turned the bottom cake upside down and I sliced the top of the upper cake layer to make it level). I had another 9" cake pan filled with a 1.5 quarts of softened ice cream, made very smooth and level which was put in the freezer for the same amount of time as the cakes. (put saran wrap in the cake pan before the ice cream for easy removal).

Next, stack the ice cream cake on top of the cakes, carve around the edges of the ice cream if it's wider than the cakes (the cakes shrink away from the pan sides when baking, the ice cream doesn't) and put back in the freezer for a bit to get nice and frozen again. Meanwhile, take out some vanilla ice cream to let soften (I used about 1/2 of a 1.5 quart container), this will be the frosting. I've read that real frosting doesn't go on the ice cream part of the cake well. The ice cream frosting worked like a dream and tasted great. Put back in the freezer until the party (of course! (-:)

Ben wanted Reese's peanut butter cup ice cream (I found chocolate ice cream with peanut butter cups, close enough I thought) and chocolate cake (I did a devil's food cake mix because I ran out of energy to get the ingredients for "the best chocolate cake" recipe I found). I did a vanilla bean ice cream for the frosting, but I think I would have preferred plain vanilla with all the other flavors.

And that's it. One, two, three and you're done!

Ingredients:

Cake for two 9" round cake pans

1&1/2 quarts ice cream for one 9" round cake pan

frosting for in between the cake layers

1 quart vanilla ice cream to frost entire cake