So, after we just talked about how to eat to lose weight…LOL…let’s talk about how to make a delicious ice cream cake, yay!! A couple weeks ago, my boss threw a little surprise pizza lunch for me and another guy who reached our 5 year mark at Piper and my boss also brought ice cream cake. I hadn’t eaten ice cream cake in so long and it reminded me that I had been wanting to try to make my own ice cream cake using my ice cream maker and a springform pan. I realized that I hadn’t figured out what I was bringing to the book club so I figured, why not? Let’s make an ice cream cake!
I didn’t have a whole lot of time since I was making it on a work night after bootcamp so I decided to cheat and use a box of brownie mix in the pantry. I mixed up the brownies and poured them into an extra tall (4” tall) 9” diameter spring-form pan. If you haven’t used a spring-form pan before, they are pretty neat. The sides and bottom of the pan are two separate pieces and the “side” piece has a latch that lets you expand or close it. This way you can bake something in the pan, then unlatch the side of the pan and pop it open.
I didn’t have a whole lot of time since I was making it on a work night after bootcamp so I decided to cheat and use a box of brownie mix in the pantry. I mixed up the brownies and poured them into an extra tall (4” tall) 9” diameter spring-form pan. If you haven’t used a spring-form pan before, they are pretty neat. The sides and bottom of the pan are two separate pieces and the “side” piece has a latch that lets you expand or close it. This way you can bake something in the pan, then unlatch the side of the pan and pop it open.
Once the brownies were in the oven, I used my KitchenAid Ice Cream maker to make a batch of peanut butter ice cream. I make my ice cream based on recipes from a Ben & Jerry’s cookbook but it’s basically milk, heavy cream, sugar, an egg and some peanut butter (yes my ice cream has raw eggs in it – I know we’ve been warned not to eat raw eggs or cookie dough but the ice cream comes out MUCH better if you use the egg).
When the brownies were done, I let them cool on the counter until the pan wasn’t too hot to touch and then I put it in the freezer a bit so it wouldn’t melt the ice cream. Once the brownies and springform pan were cool, I was ready to assemble the cake. I simply chopped up some Reese’s peanut butter cups and sprinkled them on top and then spread the ice cream over top (since I just made the ice cream it is still soft and easy to spread but isn’t liquid – perfect for making an ice cream cake).
I did learn one important lesson about using a spring-form pan for an ice cream cake – be careful with the latch if you decide to open the pan while it is frozen. I unlatched mine and then was holding onto the latch instead of the pan itself while I was trying to pop the pan open (dummy me!) and I broke the latch! The rivets that attach the latch to the pan didn’t snap but they pulled right through the pan. Good thing I work at an aircraft manufacturer and can just ask one of the mechanics to rivet it back together for me, LOL.
When I took the side of the spring-form pan off finally, you can see it had exactly the effect I wanted – the cake is smooth and even and all pretty for serving. I was thinking I would frost the cake but I did NOT think about the fact that a can of store frosting would not want to spread over frozen ice cream. Next time I’ll cover it with chocolate ganache or maybe even just buy a bottle of that Magic Shell Chocolate where you squeeze it out and it hardens instantly. If you’ve been wanting to make an ice cream cake I definitely recommend making one like this, it was DELICIOUS, easy and pretty!
By the way, I would say this cake makes around 16 servings. Ryan definitely approved and KC seemed determined to eat Ryan’s piece!!
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