Ice Cream Cake Tutorial

I shared HERE how I made my son an ice cream cake for his birthday. I was a little intimidated to do an ice cream cake, mostly because it's so humid here and I just knew the humidity would be an issue. It was actually pretty easy, once I figured it all out. Here are some pics with an explanation of how I did it.

First I just baked a cake (I used a store bought mix) in two 8 inch rounds. After they cooled, I removed them from the pans and wrapped them in wax paper and secured it with masking tape.

Then I used one of the cake pans and spread some (slightly melted) ice cream into it. I put waxed paper under and on top of the ice cream. After I put the wax paper on top of the ice cream, I gently pressed down with my hands to smooth it out. The heat from your hands will kind of melt and squish the ice cream so it's flat on top. 

Here's a pic of the ice cream in the cake pan and one of the cake layers ready to go into the freezer. 

This is a great tip...I turned my freezer up to freeze the ice cream faster. On my fridge/freezer, a setting of 5 is "normal" and 9 is the coldest. As you can see, I turned mine up to 8. This helped tremendously to freeze the ice cream in the cake pan. 

 I froze the cake layers and the ice cream for several hours in the freezer. 

Then I took the cake layers out and cut any high spots off the top so they would be flat and even. 

I also took the ice cream out and cut about an inch away from the sides. You want the ice cream layer to be a little smaller than the cake layers, otherwise, the frosting won't stick to it very well. For some reason, if you kind of "indent" the ice cream a little, the frosting is able to "hold on" to the cake a little better. Does that make sense? 

Then I just stacked them up with the ice cream in the middle and put the assembled cake back into the freezer for a couple of hours.

Here's what it looked like after it was assembled. You can see how the ice cream is "indented" a little. 

After a couple of hours, I took it back out of the freezer and frosted it. I could only frost about 1/3 of the cake at a time, then I had to put it back in the freezer so it wouldn't melt. It was a long process. :) 

Here's what I stored the finished cake in. I bought this plastic cake container at my local bakery for $2. I bought the cardboard cake round (on the left) at Hob Lob. It was a little big, so I had to cut it down to size with some scissors. 

And here's the finished product! It was really good! 

Here it is after we cut into it. So yummy!

Doesn't it make you want a slice? :)

Well, hopefully you picked up a tip or two on how to make an ice cream cake. Let me know if any of you try it. It's such a perfect cake for a summer birthday. 

~Lisa