Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cake

A few weeks ago we celebrated my husbands birthday.  Growing up his family celebrated with an ice cream cake.  Since we’ve been married, there are years that I’ve bought him an ice cream cake and some years I would just make a regular cake.  I would just make a regular cake because I had never made an ice cream cake before.  For some reason, they scared me.  Well this year I decided to face my fear of the ice cream cake.  And shockingly, it was really easy!

Since I was going the easy route with this cake, I used a box cake mix and made 2 (9 inch) cakes.  My hubby loves chocolate cake with mint chocolate chip ice cream, so I chose a triple chocolate cake mix.

Once my cakes were cooled, I trimmed just a little off the top so that they would be a little more even.  Then I used a 9 inch spring form pan to assemble my cake.

I placed one of the chocolate cakes on the bottom of the spring form pan.  As I was preparing my cakes for the spring form pan, I let my 1/2 gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream sit on the counter so it could soften.  Once my ice cream was softened, I smoothed it over the bottom layer of chocolate cake.  I used both a spatula and clean hands to spread the ice cream.  I tried to work as quickly as possible to keep the melting to a minimum.

Then I topped the ice cream layer with the other chocolate cake.  I covered it with plastic wrap and put it in the freezer for a couple hours.  I only had about 1 1/2 hours to let it firm up before I needed to frost it, and it could’ve used more time to chill.

To get the ice cream cake out of the spring form pan, I ran a butter knife under warm water and gently ran the knife around the edge of the pan to loosen the ice cream.

I moved the cake from the spring form pan onto a cake plate.  Then I used some whipped topping (cool whip) to frost the cake.  I used  1 1/2 (8 oz) tubs to cover my cake.  I wanted to make sure it was totally covered.

Then I took a chocolate bar and used a potato peeler to shave some chocolate onto the top of the cake!

I placed the cake back in the freezer for about 4 more hours to set up.

For my first attempt, it turned out great!  My husband’s only complaint that there wasn’t enough ice cream in it.  I used an entire 1/2 gallon!  So next time I will pile on more ice cream.  And I will let it chill in the freezer for as long as possible.

Now that I know how easy an ice cream cake is, my hubby will be able to enjoy ice cream cake on his birthday every year!  Lucky guy. 🙂

Happy Celebrating!

Liz