Ice cream sandwich cake

When I saw red hearts on a spiral cake decoration on cookingclassy, I was inspired. I was going to do the same with white chocolate and red colouring.

After 3 hours of work, what I got was this...

This work of...

Monstrosity.

I could make a trifle, but I happened to be craving cookies and creme ice cream. It is possible that making the cookies and crème truffles has led to my craving for cookies and crème ice cream, so an ice cream sandwich cake seemed to be the right path in life to take.

Evidently, the right path in life for me is almost always the most calorific.

So I dismantled my 3 hours of work and broke off the white chocolate decoration to start over with the cake itself.

Ice cream sandwich cake

Root beer cake (recipe here)
Ice cream tub (flavour of your choice, I used cookies and creme)
White chocolate (8 oz.)
Melted chocolate chips

1. Slice the cake into three parts.
2. On top of the bottom third layer, top with ice cream.
3. Top that with a second layer of cake.
4. Plop ice cream again on top. Level it.
5. Top with the last third of the cake
6. Then coat the whole thing with melted white chocolate so that you can be rid of that dastardly white chocolate-that-forms-lumps FOR-EVA!
7. Place in freezer (for 5-10 minutes) to let the white chocolate coating cool.
8. In the meantime, melt the chocolate chips using a double boiler. Put the melted chocolate in a Ziploc bag.
9. Take out the cake out from the freezer.
10. Snip off one of the ends of the Ziploc bag containing melted chocolate so you can drizzle the melted chocolate chips on top of the white chocolate.
11. Place in fridge to let the chocolate drizzle set.

You can look at it from different angles.

Or cut it in two so you can prepare to take a slice.

At each moment, give profuse thanks that the cake no longer looks like this.

Cut up a slice. Eat.

NOW!

It's not that I can't practice delayed gratification.

It's just that we wouldn't want the ice cream to melt, would we?

Note that you can only make an ice cream sandwich cake with a very dense cake like the root beer cake because otherwise the cake soaks up the ice cream and turns all mushy. Some recipes call for biscuits, like this scrumptious delight at bake at 350 (this is not to say that my root beer cake turned out hard like a biscuit, okay!)

What would The Failed Chef do next time?

• I would choose a different ice cream because this one (King's) melts too fast, which means if the ice cream is firmed up, the cake is frozen. If the cake is soft enough for eating, the ice cream is slush. Sheesh, what hope do we have for world peace if even cake and ice cream can’t get along?
• I would try a different brand of white chocolate (Selbourne) because this one seems to form lumps instead of smooth melted chocolate even when there had been no contact with water!