Ice Cream Cake
Posted by Stacey R. on Monday, March 28, 2011
So it's been a while guys! Cakes have been slow, but I have a feeling they'll be picking up soon. :)
Okay. Spencer doesn't particularly like cake, so I decided to try to make him an ice cream cake. I had never done this before, but it seemed easy enough. He has really been into disk golf lately (don't ask), and he wanted a mini strawberry cake (his favorite of my flavors), so I decided what better to do than a disk made out of grass sittin on some grass made out of ice cream. He also wanted me to mix the color into the fondant...the last time I did this it didn't turn out so great (see the corset cake's bottom layer). The food coloring sucked up all the extra moisture, and anyone who works with fondant knows that no moisture=disaster. You're almost guaranteed major cracks and a crumbly mess...and there's almost nothing you can do to fix it. (This is when kneading in the color AFTER the fondant has been mixed. I plan on trying to add color before I add powdered sugar on my next cake to see if it helps) BUT I thought that this problem of crackly fondant during the corset cake could be chalked up to the humidity (or lack thereof) at the time. I quickly learned it was not. That dumb yellow fondant was so hard to work with, it wasn't even funny. You would think yellow would be an easy color to make too, right? No way. I'm tellin ya. If any of y'all are lookin to make a donation, a fondant roller would be PERFECT. Or an airbrush machine. haha.
Okay anyways. So Spencer and I went and grabbed a bucket of Neapolitan ice cream, some whipped cream, and the ingrediants for fondant at the store, and then I got to work. I went a head and put the ice cream in the pan and then the pan in the freezer that night, and I also baked and dirty iced (with the whipped cream) the cake. The next morning I awoke and got crackin again. Made and colored the fondant, rolled it out, got frazzled (crackly mess), placed it on, breathed a sigh of relief because it went on okay, etc. The disk was to be modeled after his favorite disk, the "Spider" (read "spee-eye-der", like from Megamind hehe), so I had to hand paint that on there. Ooo! Add food coloring markers to that list of needed donations haha. Or maybe just some powdered colors. Either way, tryin to paint with that gel was like tryin to draw on the waxy side of wax paper with a really bad marker. It just would NOT stick. I finished that, then moved to the ice cream part. I colored the whipped cream green (that was more difficult than it sounds as well...it turned out lookin kinda minty), iced the cake, tried to make it stick up some like grass, added some brown sugar for sand, and then put it back in the freezer. Whew! I'm two hours a head of schedule! We ended up taking it on over because everyone was already there.
Hunter (Spencer's younger brother, middle) rode with us, and he carried the disk cake, while I carried the ice cream cake. In my lap. On an 80ish degree Oklahoma day. The ac was on full blast but it was about a 20 minute drive and this was cheap ice cream so I'm sure you can imagine the meltage that began. Hunter was trying to spoon up the overflow (and eating it of course) but that still didn't save my shirt and pants. Fun times. We get there, and guess what. THE CAKE WAS TOO WIDE FOR THE FREEZER!!! At this point I'm thinkin we really should have just taken a few more minutes to looks for a big enough box back at my house. But, we shove it in the fridge, cram some ice around it, and promise to eat it soon. As you can see, it sagged a little more, but it wasn't a total puddle. And they say it tasted great! All I know, is that ice cream cake is in my arsenal now, so all you cake haters but ice cream lovers can enjoy me works too!
This is a close up picture of the disk. Yes, it's supposed to look dirty.
Okay. Spencer doesn't particularly like cake, so I decided to try to make him an ice cream cake. I had never done this before, but it seemed easy enough. He has really been into disk golf lately (don't ask), and he wanted a mini strawberry cake (his favorite of my flavors), so I decided what better to do than a disk made out of grass sittin on some grass made out of ice cream. He also wanted me to mix the color into the fondant...the last time I did this it didn't turn out so great (see the corset cake's bottom layer). The food coloring sucked up all the extra moisture, and anyone who works with fondant knows that no moisture=disaster. You're almost guaranteed major cracks and a crumbly mess...and there's almost nothing you can do to fix it. (This is when kneading in the color AFTER the fondant has been mixed. I plan on trying to add color before I add powdered sugar on my next cake to see if it helps) BUT I thought that this problem of crackly fondant during the corset cake could be chalked up to the humidity (or lack thereof) at the time. I quickly learned it was not. That dumb yellow fondant was so hard to work with, it wasn't even funny. You would think yellow would be an easy color to make too, right? No way. I'm tellin ya. If any of y'all are lookin to make a donation, a fondant roller would be PERFECT. Or an airbrush machine. haha.
Okay anyways. So Spencer and I went and grabbed a bucket of Neapolitan ice cream, some whipped cream, and the ingrediants for fondant at the store, and then I got to work. I went a head and put the ice cream in the pan and then the pan in the freezer that night, and I also baked and dirty iced (with the whipped cream) the cake. The next morning I awoke and got crackin again. Made and colored the fondant, rolled it out, got frazzled (crackly mess), placed it on, breathed a sigh of relief because it went on okay, etc. The disk was to be modeled after his favorite disk, the "Spider" (read "spee-eye-der", like from Megamind hehe), so I had to hand paint that on there. Ooo! Add food coloring markers to that list of needed donations haha. Or maybe just some powdered colors. Either way, tryin to paint with that gel was like tryin to draw on the waxy side of wax paper with a really bad marker. It just would NOT stick. I finished that, then moved to the ice cream part. I colored the whipped cream green (that was more difficult than it sounds as well...it turned out lookin kinda minty), iced the cake, tried to make it stick up some like grass, added some brown sugar for sand, and then put it back in the freezer. Whew! I'm two hours a head of schedule! We ended up taking it on over because everyone was already there.
Hunter (Spencer's younger brother, middle) rode with us, and he carried the disk cake, while I carried the ice cream cake. In my lap. On an 80ish degree Oklahoma day. The ac was on full blast but it was about a 20 minute drive and this was cheap ice cream so I'm sure you can imagine the meltage that began. Hunter was trying to spoon up the overflow (and eating it of course) but that still didn't save my shirt and pants. Fun times. We get there, and guess what. THE CAKE WAS TOO WIDE FOR THE FREEZER!!! At this point I'm thinkin we really should have just taken a few more minutes to looks for a big enough box back at my house. But, we shove it in the fridge, cram some ice around it, and promise to eat it soon. As you can see, it sagged a little more, but it wasn't a total puddle. And they say it tasted great! All I know, is that ice cream cake is in my arsenal now, so all you cake haters but ice cream lovers can enjoy me works too!
This is a close up picture of the disk. Yes, it's supposed to look dirty.