posted by mommies2cents on 2011, 30th birthday, Desserts, recipes

17 comments

I usually buy birthday cakes. It’s just the way my mom always did it so I never thought about making one. This year on Mr. M2C birthday I decided that I would attempt to make his cake. I asked him what kind of cake he wanted, expecting something simple for my first official birthday cake attempt. He tells me he wants a chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream cake with vanilla cake. I smiled and said OK! On the inside I was freaking out! He couldn’t just say chocolate?!

Still I was determined to pull it off. I must tell you that it didn’t turn out quite as pretty as I had hoped and I also hit a few snags along the way but it was pretty tasty!

What you’ll need:

• 1 boxed vanilla cake mix
• 2 1.5 pint cartons of Cookie Dough ice cream
• 1 Chocolate Buttercream Frosting recipe (see below)
• Chocolate Sprinkles
• 1 Box of Chocolate Covered Cookie Dough Pieces

I started with a boxed cake mix. I would have made one from scratch but since they are going to be in the freezer, I figured it would be fine. I prefer Duncan Hines cake mix but any boxed cake mix will do.

While the cake is cooling, I used the same pans to make the ice cream layers. Line the bottom of the cake pan with plastic wrap and start scooping in your ice cream. Each of my cake pans holds 1.5 quarts of ice cream. Make sure you soften the ice cream a bit first by sitting it out on the counter.

Keep pressing the ice cream down and smoothing it out so it fills in all of the holes. You want a solid layer of ice cream. Once all of the ice cream is in, pull the sides of the plastic wrap up over the top and put in the freezer until hard.

I set one cake pan on top of the other one in the freezer and that seemed to help freeze the layers faster.

Make sure you shave the rounded part of the cake layers off to make the flat and as even as possible. I put the large pieces that I shaved off in a bowl and this keeps kids and husbands away from your cake because they have some to snack on!

THIS is one of those snags I was talking about! While I was getting the ingredients out for the frosting. Our dog Holly decided that she would test out the cake. This layer had to be tossed and I had to make another layer of cake!

Once I am back on track with my cake layers, I start making the frosting. Make sure you sift the sugar and cocoa powder together. I think this makes a huge difference in the end result. Unfortunately, I don’t have a nice stand mixer even though it’s been on my Christmas list for I don’t know how many years. I use a hand mixer and I must warn you that this can be a bit messy!

The lighting is not great on this picture but the frosting should be a light brown color.

Now it’s time to start assembeling your cake! Select your thickest cake layer for the bottom. This will give you a sturdy base.

I found it’s best to put the rough sides of your ice cream layers together.

I used a large knife to shave off excess ice cream. They are slightly bigger than the cake layers because the cake draws away from the sides of the pan when it cooks making them smaller. Once they are even, start putting the frosting on. This was the most frustrating part of the whole process. As the ice cream gets soft it won’t allow the frosting to stick. I used a butter knife to scrape off the melted part as I frosted the sides. This part takes patience! Just keep going and adding more frosting. Once I hit my rhythm, it was a lot easier. Push back, pull forward, push back, pull forward…

It’s not perfect but I was so happy just to have it frosted that I didn’t care! At this point I put it in the freezer just to firm up a bit while I got my decorations out.

I used chocolate covered cookie dough chunks and chocolate sprinkles for the top. Mr. M2C wanted to keep it simple but you could get as fancy as you want.

The cake sliced wonderfully! Everyone got a giant piece with lots of ice cream and the cake was so moist!

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks or 1/2 pound), softened (but not melted!)
• 3 1/2 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• 1 teaspoon almond extract or you can use 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, whichever you prefer
• 4 tablespoons milk or heavy cream

 

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