The ULTIMATE Birthday Dessert
While many ice cream cakes are madeof just ice cream, that’s never been my favorite way to enjoy them. I like real cake layers in mine, and that’s exactly how I designed today’s ice cream cake recipe! Punctuated with fun sprinkles and frosted with stabilized whipped cream, never has a cake screamed it’s time to party so much since my Zebra cake! My ice cream cake recipe consists of fudgy, rich chocolate cake layers and an incredibly easy ice cream center (no ice cream machine needed!). The cake layers themselves are a slightly scaled down version of my chocolate cupcakes (it makes the perfect cake-to-ice-cream ratio). The cake layers were specifically designed to be frozen and eaten cold, unlike most of my cake recipes. I’ve included many recipes notes and a video (of course!) below, and I definitely recommend you watch the video if you’re nervous about assembling your cake. I like to use an acetate cake collar to make things easy, but I also include instructions in case you don’t have or don’t want to buy one.
What You Need
There are quite a few ingredients in the photo above, and while all of them are basic pantry staples, there are a few worth highlighting:
Natural cocoa powder. I prefer using natural cocoa powder here, but you could use Dutch process instead. The flavor will be more intense with Dutch process cocoa.Hot water/coffee. Hot liquid helps to bloom the cocoa powder in the cake, ultimately intensifying the flavor for a rich chocolate cake. Use whichever you have on hand, but keep in mind that using coffee won’t actually make your cake taste like coffee (just in case you’re not a fan!).Corn starch. You know I love sneaking some cornstarch into my desserts to make them beautifully soft and tender, and this ice cream cake is no different. It helps make the cake sturdy, stackable, with a crumb that still melts-in-your-mouth despite being frozen!Sweetened condensed milk. We’ll use this to make an easy, no-churn ice cream layer for our ice cream cake. Make sure you’re using sweetened condensed milk and not evaporated milk, which won’t work!Heavy cream. Another ingredient for the ice cream, your heavy cream should be very cold in order to whip up properly.
SAM’S TIP: If you use 9″ pans instead of 8″ pans, the layers will be thinner and the bake time will be different as well. Keep an eye on your cakes while they bake; I recommend checking them after about 26 minutes with 9″ pans. Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Ice Cream Cake
SAM’S TIP: Let your ice cream cake sit for several minutes before slicing, or simply run a knife under very hot water and then wipe dry before cutting. With two desserts wrapped into one, you couldn’t really ask for a better birthday cake! Enjoy! Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook
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