There has been a birthday cake tradition in my family for 2 generations and its home-made ice cream birthday cake. I know that sounds daunting, with the potential for it to end up as a pile of melting, sticky, gunk. And as my mother tells it, that has happened on more than one occasion. But hey it will still taste good!
As for the origin of said ice cream cake, that’s a little unknown. But my mom believes it was born out of domestic competitiveness between my grandma Beverly and her sister Laverne. Yikes! Gotta love family dynamics. The moral of that story is, there is always plenty of cake to go around! So here is the recipe, hand written in my mother’s hand writing <3. See below for additional notes.
Tips:
1- Instead of foil use plastic wrap to line the aluminum pie tins.
2- Ice cream brand and flavors are up to you. We have always stuck with 31 Flavors. With the 3 flavors being: Strawberry, Mint Chip and a chocolate flavor, that always seemed to rotate. Originally it was Rocky Road, then it moved to Jamoca Almond Fudge. But hey, go all chocolate if you want.
3- If you don’t want to wait to have pints packed, you can buy the pre-packed quarts…If so, use the cake recipe in blue ink, to the left of the original recipe.
4- Step 1 is the ice cream layers and refreezing
5- Bake the cake…The step for adding the lemon extract it missing. It can be added to the 1C + 2T of Milk.
6- After greasing the cake pan, dust with flour. Shake out excess flour.
7- I use a wooden skewer instead of a fork to test for doneness
8- I suggest freezing the assembled cake overnight & on the plate you plan to serve it on. The less moving the better!
9- After frosting the cake, decorate with whatever you may like. We choose strawberries. Which also make for great candle holders.
10- Place candles in cake, re-cover with plastic wrap. The candles help keep the plastic wrap from sticking to the whipped cream.
11- Refreeze for about 15 min.
12- To cut, use a cake knife & flowing the diagram on the right hand side of the recipe. A circle, with a line down the middle and lines then cutting across.
