Butter Pecan Chocolate Ice Cream Cake

Aaah! Time has definitely gotten the best of me. So much has happened since my last post. I started a new job (so this means I’m living somewhere else during the work week), my parents came home from a month-long vacation, my friend gave birth to a healthy baby boy, I went to Arizona for my BFF’s wedding, and a couple of friends from high school came back to visit. And on top of it all, the internet has been down.

So let’s start with my attempt on making an ice cream cake for my bf’s mom’s birthday. I love to make her desserts because she is not at all picky when it comes to sweets and she hasn’t complained about any of my attempts 😉 This is a pretty simple way to make an ice cream cake. The way I made it, yields 2 cakes. One I made into an ice cream cake and the other I used the extra ganache and sprinkled Reese’s Peanut Butter on top and ate it as is!

I was on a time crunch so I made a chocolate cake from a boxed mix. I split the batter into two 8-inch round pans. Pop cake out onto a cooling rack to cool.

If you want to level your cake, do so now. I don’t like my cakes to have a “dome” shape so I used a large knife to shave off the top.

Let ice cream thaw on countertop. Line the round pan with saran-wrap.

Spread a thick layer of thawed ice cream along the bottom of the pan. (For some reason I sprinkled cake crumbs before taking a picture…)

Place cake back inside pan and make sure cake is centered. When I did this, there was a bit of an opening on the sides. Add more thawed ice cream to cover the sides.

Cover pan with saran-wrap and place in freezer for an hour. I only placed it in the freezer for about 30 minutes and decided to make the ganache while I waited. Bad idea! (Make sure the ice cream is hard before you start the ganache!) My ganache was ready but the ice cream hadn’t hardened up so I let my ganache sit while I waited another half hour. I think this is why my ganache turned out lumpy instead of smooth 😦

When the cake is ready,carefully flip the pan over and remove the plastic wrap. Place the cake on a rack with parchment paper underneath.

Pour the ganache over the cake and add chopped up Reese’s Peanut Butter (bf’s mom loves PB)! I know it doesn’t look very pretty and I wish I could say I tasted the cake but I wasn’t able to try it myself. I heard that it was good though so I guess it was a success 🙂