Ice Cream Cake!!!!!

This is the inaugural picture for my blog! So, I usually don't write much about my own cooking, but I think that it's fun to mix things up occasionally. It was Eugene's birthday, so I made him his dream cake -- an ice cream cake with 3 layers of devil's food cake and chocolate mint chocolate ice cream. That's right, not mint chocolate chip ice cream, but chocolate ice cream flavored with mint with chocolate chips. I made the cake layers and the ice cream and frosting from scratch. I love making cakes and oftentimes consider quitting my day job to become a pastry chef. I hate mint chocolate chip ice cream or any kind of chocoalte chip ice cream that has hard chips. To solve the hard chip problem, I made a sturdy chocolate ganache and mixed little scoops of it in with the ice cream. It worked like a charm. The chocolate "chips" were nice and soft without being so soft as to be a fudge swirl. I also mixed in some York peppermint patties for good measure.

I used the devil's food cake recipe on the cake flour box, which I like a lot. I substituted some extra light olive oil for part of the butter for optimal moistness, and used Dutch process chocolate instead of the regular cocoa because I like dark chocolate better (and so does Eugene).

Once, I tried to make an ice cream cake, which ended in disaster. Despite being cool, the cake layers melted the ice cream. This time, I froze the cake layers overnight (before sandwiching the ice cream in) and was able to avoid the melting problem.

The cake is frosted with a Cool Whip/chocolate pudding cocoa frosting, which had a great consistency for the "cloud" effect that I was going for. It almost reminds me of chocolate cake batter in flavor. Yummy! It's also surprisingly durable. It doesn't melt if it sits out too long, and it does beautifully in the freezer.

I topped it off with some crushed candy cane which added a perfect crunchy finish to the cake.