How to make ICE CREAM CAKE!

This year J wanted an ice cream cake for his birthday!

Of course nowhere sells ice cream cakes that he can eat, so I made one for him. It was surprisingly easy.

I picked a "safe" recipe for chocolate cake, which I found online. It is called "Sandy's Chocolate Cake," and I found it on allrecipes.com. I followed one of the people who left a comment, and I changed the recipe from 12 servings to 9 servings, to make a 2 layer cake instead of a 3 layer cake.

The ingredients were:
2-1/4 cups packed brown sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
3 eggs
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup and 1 tablespoon baking cocoa
2-1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream
1 cup boiling water

Instructions:
In a mixing bowl, cream brown sugar and butter. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat on high speed until light and fluffy. Blend in vanilla. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; add alternately with sour cream to creamed mixture. Mix on low just until combined. Stir in water until blended. Pour into two greased and floured 9-in. round baking pans. Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes. Cool in pans 10 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

So, I just followed those instructions. Except, instead of greasing and flouring my pan, I traced the pan on a paper towel, and cut it out, so that I could plop a piece of paper towel in the bottom of the pan. Then I just poured the batter on top of the paper towel and cooked it that way. My grandma taught me to do that one time when we were making a cake at her house, when I was 14 or so. I tried to warn her that there was no way it would work, because you really need to grease and flour the pans. She told me we didn't need to. She was right. When you're ready to take the cake out of the pan, you loosen the edges with a knife (if you need to), and then since the paper towel is at the bottom, it'll just come right out of the pan. (I set a plate on top of the pan, and flip the whole thing over and pull the pan up off of the cake). Then you just peel the paper towel circle off of the bottom. So, so easy!

I made my two halves of the cake and let them cool completely. I was putting Haagen Daaz chocolate peanut butter ice cream in the middle (it is "safe" and it's J's favorite flavor), so I put the two containers in the fridge while my cakes were cooling. That way the ice cream wasn't melty, but it was soft enough to spread around pretty easily on the cake.

I trimmed the cakes so they were round, instead of slightly cone-shaped (because I cooked them in a pie dish!).

I put foil on a plate, and set one of the cakes on the foil-plate, upside down. Then I spread 1 1/2 or 1 1/3 pint containers of Haagen Daaz on that bottom cake. Then I put the top cake on top (right-side up). I kind of smooshed it together a little, so that the ice cream would get into the top layer of cake, too. I covered the whole thing with foil, and put it in the freezer overnight.

The next day, I made the frosting:

Ingredients:
1/4 c. and 2 tablespoons butter
2-1/4 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate
2-1/4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate
3-3/4 cups confectioners' sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions: For frosting, in a medium saucepan, melt butter and chocolate over low heat. Cool several minutes. In a mixing bowl, combine sugar, sour cream and vanilla. Add chocolate mixture and beat until smooth.

I used some 70% Lindt chocolate and some 85% Lindt chocolate (which are both "safe"), and I weighed them on our kitchen scale.

I frosted the cake right before we were ready to serve it, because I wasn't sure what it would do if I froze it (like, would it turn gray on top, or something?). Actually, though, we froze the leftover cake, and the frosting did just fine.

I'm sure you could probably do this with a cake from a mix, and any kind of ice cream--just make two circle cakes, let them cool, put softened (not melted!) ice cream on one layer, put the second layer on top, freeze it together, and add frosting.

It was really tasty! Everyone loved J's cake.