A long-standing birthday tradition in my family was to pick what kind of cake Mom would make for our birthday dinner or party.  One time I said cheesecake and was told I was supposed to say vanilla or chocolate (or maybe fun-fetti).  Now that Adam and I continue that in our family, I have had some strange requests to which I respond, “you were supposed to say vanilla or chocolate.”  But, of course, just like I got my cheesecake as a child, I oblige Adam’s birthday cake wishes as well.  Two years ago was chocolate pecan pie and last year was french silk pie, so who knows what to expect.

With Adam’s birthday arriving today, I asked him last weekend what kind of cake he would like.  This year an ice cream cake was the style of choice.  That was not at all what I expected, but I’m always up for a new adventure.  So, after some good old-fashioned Google searching, I took bits and pieces of recipes to create a Dairy Queen (-ish) ice cream cake.

The recipe starts with any two types of ice cream.  The traditional cake would be vanilla and chocolate, but I went out on a limb to use our favorite peppermint stick flavor instead of vanilla.  So the cake ended up like this, from the bottom up — oreo and butter crust, chocolate ice cream, crushed oreos, hot fudge, a few more crushed oreos, peppermint ice cream, and frosting.

I read conflicting opinions on starting from the top vs. starting from the bottom.  It seems to me not to really matter, so I actually did a combination.  It’s easiest to use a high cake pan and do the whole thing in there, although that does require more advanced planning because each layer has to freeze.  I don’t have a tall one, so I used two.

After the ice cream softens a bit to be spreadable and you’ve covered the inside of the cake pans with plastic wrap, spread the top flavor (peppermint in my case) into the first pan.  Then,  sprinkle a layer of crushed oreos on top, followed by slightly warmed hot fudge.  That pan immediately goes into the freezer before the fudge gets through to melt the ice cream.  For the second pan, mix some crushed oreos with a couple tablespoons of melted butter and press it into the bottom of the pan (I made up that step, but it seemed like that would pretty much make that special Dairy Queen crust).  Then, spread the chocolate ice cream into a nice thick layer.  If your birthday boy requests extra oreos like mine did, you can put another layer of crushed oreos on top of this layer too.  I also thought that extra layer of oreos would help bond the two ice cream layers together when stacked.  After all of that freezes overnight, you can stack them up on a cake board placing the crust layer on the bottom (with plastic wrap removed ) and then flip the top layer over on top.  Put it all back in the freezer.

That’s as far as I got for the day, so we’ll talk about the special frosting and if I succeeded in making it like Dairy Queen in the next post.

Update: Continue to “Fake” Dairy Queen ice cream cake – Part II to see the finished product and learn how to create it yourself.