Super Duper Birthday Ice Cream Cake

A couple years back, my dad asked for an ice cream cake for his birthday.  The cake we had was so amazing that everyone in my family started requesting an ice cream cake for their birthdays.  Now it's become kind of a tradition.  If it's your birthday (Father's and Mother's Day have now also been incorporated) you get to choose what kind of ice cream is in the cake.  This cake is easy to put together and can go with any ice cream you choose.  This particular one was made with banana split ice cream but we've also had it with strawberry, neapolitan, cookies n cream, mint chocolate chip, tin roof sundae... you really can't go wrong.

Super Duper Birthday Ice Cream Cake
Start to finish: a few hours
Makes 8-10 servings

1/2 a standard carton of your favorite ice cream
1 bottle of hot fudge topping
1 box Jiffy white or yellow cake mix, prepared as directed (makes one layer)
1 container whipped cream
Pretty toppings (will vary based on ice cream, in this case I used bananas and vanilla wafers)

First, mix the cake mix per the directions.

Pour it into a non-stick spring form pan.  It's important you use a spring form pan so that you can easily release the cake later.

 Bake it as directed.  Let it cool.  Release the spring form sides to reveal the cake.  You will see it is domed.  We're going to shave this off so the cake is level.

Put the sides back onto the pan.  Make sure they are clasped around the base.  Pour the bottle of hot fudge into the middle of the cake and spread it evenly with an offset spatula.   You may need to microwave the jar for 30 seconds to 1 minute so that it pours out easily.

Stick this in the freezer until the hot fudge has firmed up.  I say give it an hour.  If you have a deep freeze that's even better.  It freezes better.

About 10 minutes before you are ready to take the cake out of the freezer, set out your ice cream to soften.  When it is very soft and moldable, go ahead and place half a carton of it onto your cake.

Again, use your offset spatula to spread it evenly.

Put this back into the freezer until it is rock hard (probably another hour).  When it's properly frozen, spread an entire carton of whipped topping over the top.

Are you drooling yet?

Sprinkle the cake with the toppings of your choosing.  Crumbled cookies always make a delicious topper, but depending on the ice cream, you may want to use fresh fruit, or if you're feeling festive, colored sugar and/or sprinkles.

Put the cake in the freezer until you are ready to eat it.  Set the cake out for 10 minutes before removing the spring form edges.

Even though you will be tempted to dig in right away, don't forget that technically the birthday boy/girl should get the first slice ;-)

Chocolate Chip Bacon Cookies

If anyone is still reading this blog after my extended absence (aka laziness) over these last couple weeks, I love you so.  I could make lots of excuses for you as to why I haven't been blogging but you don't want to hear about my crazy job, my vacation, the multiple culinary failures that made me doubt myself...No, you just want to get to the cookies!

Now, if you think the combination of chocolate and bacon sounds disgusting, you would be very wrong.  So very wrong.  Bacon is becoming a very popular ingredient in desserts.  Any by popular I mean in the big fancy restaurants that we don't have here in Cow Town USA.  Here the only restaurant getting behind the bacon craze is Denny's.

Why should they get to have all the fun?

Chocolate Chip Bacon Cookies
Start to finish: 40 minutes
Makes 18 cookies

5 strips bacon
1 cup plus 3 tbsp whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter (feel free to substitute up to 3 tbsp applesauce...but they will still be bacon cookies no matter how much butter you use)
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup chocolate chips

First we are going to bake our bacon.  In my opinion baked bacon is way better than microwave bacon or skillet fried bacon, mainly because the excess fat bakes off the meat, leaving your bacon super crispy and way less fatty.

Turn your oven up to 400 degrees.  Place a cooling rack inside a foil lined cookie sheet.  Lay 5 slices of bacon across the grates.

Bake these for approximately 15 minutes.  Keep an eye on them so they don't burn.  Also turn the vents on before you open the oven door because the fat will smoke at 400 degrees.

When it is done, it should look like this:

And in case you are curious, this is all the fat you leave behind.

 I thought about subbing this for the butter in the recipe but the recipe calls for solid butter, not melted, so I just tossed the bacon fat.

While your bacon is baking, prepare your dough.  In a medium bowl, toss together the flour, baking soda, and salt.  In your mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugars.

Then add the egg and extract.  Beat that together and then incorporate the dry ingredients.

Using a spatula, fold in the chocolate chips and the bacon which you will finely chop after it comes out of the oven.  Oh and also, when your bacon is done, turn the oven down to 350 before you bake the cookies.

Spoon these by tablespoon onto a cookie sheet.  Give these cookies plenty of room to grow because they spread out nicely.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges just start to brown.

After they sit for a couple minutes, scoop them onto a cooling rack.  I don't have anything else to say about these cookies, except...

Nom. Nom. Nom.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

I don't know about you, but I LOVE chocolate and peanut butter together.  It's one of those classic combos where the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.  

It was a craving for this combo that led me down the road of chocolate peanut butter cake.  This cake has an insanely deep chocolate flavor.  It's tender and moist and the peanut butter frosting cuts through the richness.  It's pretty much the best thing I've ever made, dessert wise.  Even better, dare I say, than my Suzy Q Cake.  In fact, I'm rather sad as I write this because there is no more left and I have this sudden craving for chocolate and peanut butter.

I adapted the chocolate cake recipe from one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen.  She makes a three layer cake but I wanted a simple 9x9 cake so I adjusted accordingly.

Chocolate Cake

Makes 12 servings

Start to finish: 90 minutes

1 1/3 cup flour

1 1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup cocoa (dutch process if you can actually find it)

1 tbsp + 1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup canola oil

2/3 cup sour cream

1 cup water

1 tbsp + 1 tsp vinegar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg
1/4 cup peanut butter chips

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt into a large mixing bowl.

Whisk in the oil and sour cream.  The batter will be very crumbly.  Don't judge me for my extremely messy Kitchen Aid Mixer.

At this point start slowing adding in the water, still mixing away.

Next add the vinegar and vanilla.  Last but not least beat in the eggs.

There are two ways you can go about baking this.  If you're going for presentation, go ahead and coat two square or round cake pans with butter and cocoa and pour the batter in.  If you are looking for the easy way out, pour all the batter into a 9x9 square pan.

Can you tell which route I took?  Once the cake is poured, sprinkle peanut butter chips over the top.  Doing this at the end instead of mixing them in will prevent them from sinking to the bottom.

If you went with two pans, bake for 30 minutes.  If you went with one, bake for 45, or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean.

This cake fell a little in the oven, but have no fear.  I think this has less to do with the recipe and more to do with the fact that a few minutes into baking I discovered I had extra batter left in the mixing bowl and poured it into the middle.  Not recommended.

Take a moment to bask in the chocolate-y-ness.  If you went the double layer cake route, let the cake cool for several minutes and then turn them out onto the rack much like we did here.  If you did what I did, just leave the cake in the pan and let it cool.

While your cake is cooling, you have plenty of time to make this amazing icing!  I looked and looked and looked for a good peanut butter frosting recipe.  I wanted it to be fluffy and creamy, but not too sweet.  I wanted the peanut butter, not the sugar, to take main stage.  I think I have struck a balance here.  If you want to ice a double layer cake, I would double this amount.  Make as is for a single layer cake.

Peanut Butter Icing
Makes enough for one single layer cake
Start to finish: 5 minutes.

1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup natural creamy peanut butter
1 Tbsp of milk, more if needed
2/3 cup powdered sugar

3 ounces of chocolate or Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, broken into pieces

Cream the butter and peanut butter together until it is a little fluffed up.  Start adding in the powdered sugar a bit at a time until well incorporated.  Add the milk if the mixture gets too thick. 

Beat on high for three minutes or until the frosting looks like this:

Are you salivating yet?

Spoon all the icing onto the center of the cake and use an icing spreader to smooth it out evenly across the cake.

Sprinkle chocolate pieces over the top.  Or Reeses if you have them :-)

If only I had a piece right now...  *contemplates going into the kitchen and making this again*

Award Winning Suzy Q Cake

Ok, so I might be over-exaggerating a bit when I call this cake award winning, but it did win 2nd place in my company's bake-off.  I count that as an award.  There was a prize and a certificate, afterall :-).

This recipe comes from my grandmother.  It was a family favorite growing up.  When people ask what a Suzy Q Cake is, I tell them it's basically like eating a giant Ho Ho.  Is your mouth watering yet?

Suzy Q Cake
Makes 12 servings
Start to finish: about 2 hours

1 devil's food cake mix, prepared as directed
3 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup canola oil
4 Tbsp butter
Dash of salt
1 large egg white
1 tsp vanilla extract

Prepare your devil's food cake as directed, or feel free to substitute applesauce for oil.  I like to add a teaspoon of vanilla extract.  I think it improves the flavor of any box cake mix.  Don't forget to pre-heat your oven to the instructed temperature.

Prepare two 8-inch round cake pans.  By "prepare" I mean coat them with a thin layer of butter and cocoa.

You're probably used to coating your pan with butter and flour.  This keeps the cake from sticking to the pan and makes it easy to release after baking.  However, because this is a chocolate cake, you don't want to coat the pan with flour because then you'll have white stuff all over the outer layer of your cake, and that's just not good for presentation sake.  This is why I coat mine with cocoa.

Evenly distribute the batter into each cake pan and bake as directed.  Ignore the phantom foot in the bottom right corner.  Somebody couldn't wait to start licking the bowl on the counter...

When a toothpick comes out clean from the center of your cake, pull it out and let the cakes cool on a wire wrack.

When the pan is cool enough to handle, turn your cake pan upside down on the wire wrack and give it a good tap.  The cake should pop right out.

Can you see how dark and chocolatey this mother is?  It's going to taste so good later.

While the cakes are cooling, start putting together your filling/frosting.  If you're looking for a light cool whip type frosting or if using fat in baking scares you a little bit, you should probably stop here.  I said this cake was award winning.  I didn't say it was healthy.

Combine the powdered sugar, oil, shortening, butter, and salt in a big mixing bowl.  Beat this on high for 5 minutes.  If you have a Kitchen Aid Mixer, I strongly advise using it here because if you have to use a hand mixer for 5 minutes, your hands will surely get tired.  After 5 minutes your frosting should look like this:

Very thick, very stiff peaks.

Now add your egg white and vanilla.  Beat on high for another 3 minutes, not a second shorter.  After 3 minutes it should look like this:

Notice how the texture has gone from super stiff and chunky to smooth and velvety.

By now your cakes should be cooled.  This is a four layer cake and as you have probably noticed, we only make two cakes.  This means you have to slice each layer in half.  Place your hand over the middle to brace the cake and use a sharp serrated knife to make a horizontal cut through the middle of each layer.

Now it's time to ice the cake.  I would go ahead and do this on whatever you intend your serving plate to be.  It's important that you have enough icing for each layer so take a spatula and kind of mark your icing into sections in the bowl.  That way you use the same amount in each layer.

Start with all your icing in the middle of the cake.  Then use a spatula or icing spreader to fan out the icing evenly across the cake.

Once the icing is spread you can lay down another cake layer and repeat the process until you've iced each layer.

There will likely be some crumbs that broke away from your cake.  Instead of wasting these, I spread them on top of the cake for some added contrast.  Crushed oreos or shaved chocolate would also be good.

If you are not going to serve this right away, I would put it in the refrigerator.  This will allow the icing to set up a little.  I would also have a glass of milk on standby, because you're going to need it when you slice into this cake.

Vanilla Bean Gelato

When my husband and I visited San Francisco last year, I fell in love with gelato.  There is this gelato place in North Beach and we liked it so much that we walked a mile from our hotel, up those San Francisco streets, TWICE in the four days that we were there.

So when I saw gelato starter at Crate and Barrell, you can bet that I snatched it right up.

You may think this is cheating.  I mean, the point of making ice cream at home is that it is made from scratch.  Well, my husband and I have tested several ice cream recipes, and I think we were trying to hard to make it lighter so it never really tasted that good.  That being said, this option sounded alot more attractive.  

I also don't feel bad about this specific starter because the ingredients are very simple and arguably the same things I would use if I made it from scratch, except better because I would never spend money on real vanilla beans.

Now, this starter came with two packets.  We are on our second packet.  On the first try we basically followed instructions.  We added 2 cups of half and half and 1 cup of cream to the mix.  I never thought I would say this about ice cream, but it was TOO rich!  I couldn't eat more than a scoop at a time.  And what's the fun in that?

So this time, I lightened it up a bit... cautiously.  I kept the 2 cups half and half and instead of cream I added 1 cup 1% milk to the gelato mix.

Then I poured it into my ice cream machine and set the timer for 35 minutes. (This is one of the things I love about making ice cream, the machine does it all for you.)

About half way through you should start to see your ice cream thicken in the bowl.

You know your ice cream is ready when it's so thick it looks like it's about to bust out of your machine.  You might hear faint cries that sound like, "Eaaattt meeeeee."

As tempting as it may be to eat this straight from the bowl, your patience will be rewarded if you put it in the freezer for a couple hours, even overnight if you can humanly stand it.

The texture from this batch was noticeably different, more icy.  The first batch was super creamy.  This is to be expected as you reduce the fat content.  I am glad I reduced the fat because now it doesn't taste so overwhelmingly rich but next time I might try 2% milk to see if I can reduce the ice crystals a bit.  I have also heard adding an egg can help so I might try that as well.

At the end of the day, whether you follow my directions or theirs, if you have an ice cream machine, I highly recommend this mix.

Here's to summer!