Happy birthday, Mike!

Mike's birthday was last Saturday (3/27). Since he usually tells me what to give him, I can only surprise him by making a little something extra. In the past, I have baked him cakes, cupcakes and other treats (since this is where my forte lies), but this year, I wanted to do something a little different. I decided to try to make ice cream cake!

My original idea was to use Phillies Graham Slam ice cream in the cake. It's a specialty flavor made by Turkey Hill and it is SO GOOD. Accodring to the Turkey Hill website, it is "a concoction of graham "phlavored" ice cream swirled with graham cracker ripple and topped off with choco marshmallow cups." Trust me, this stuff is awesome. We ate it non-stop two summers ago, and then last summer for whatever reason we couldn't find it anywhere. A few weeks ago I saw a carton in my local Acme and picked it up. My brother and I finished it in less than 2 days - no joke. So I had high hopes that Acme would be stocking on this ice cream flavor all summer, but when I went to find it to make this cake, it wasn't there! Instead, there were TWO Yankees flavors available, which seems like kind of a slap in the face for all the Phillies fans. I live in Northern Delaware, which is Philles/Eagles country, so two NY team ice creams? Zero Phillies ice creams? Doesn't seem quite right.

The point of this short rambling was that I ended up choosing cookies n' cream as the ice cream flavor. I also picked up a box of yellow cake mix and a carton of Cool Whip (or rather, teh generic Acme Whipped Topping). This is the final product in all its glory:


And this is what the inside looks just so you can see the ice cream-cake layers.


Despite the shock and awe reaction I received, the cake wasn't hard to make. It was, however, time consuming. I made the cake one night, let it cool, and then put it in the freezer overnight. Then, I cut the cake into three slices and made everything even. By the way, frozen cake is much easier to cut than non-frozen cake, so I found that if you are trying to even out the top and sides, the cake is just easier to cut and trim when it's frozen. In any case, the ice cream has to be softened; I just let it sit out for about 30 minutes or so. When the cake slices were done, I spread the ice cream on top evenly and then topped it with another layer of cake. Since at that point, the ice cream is really soft and getting runny, I put it into the freezer and let it set for about an hour. I did the same thing for the second ice cream layer. Finally I coated the sides and top with Cool Whip and decorated with blue gel frosting stuff. That went into the freezer as well. I found that covering up the Cool Whipped sides with wax paper made the cake much easier to handle. The hardest part of this whole thing? Transporting the cake from my place in Delaware to Mike's place in Philly. It's a 40 minute drive and I left it on the floor of the passenger's side with the air conditioning on blast. Subsequently, my feet were freezing as well, but at least everyone enjoyed the cake!