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Melting Ice Cream Cake
There's no wrong season for ice cream, right? This recipe features a fun confetti twist on the classic melting ice cream cake design!
Servings: 16 servings
Calories: 897kcal
Equipment
- 4 8 inch round cake pans (or 3 8-inch rounds + one additional pan; to bake cake to mash for the 'ice cream scoop')
- Squeeze bottle (or piping bag or spoon; to add chocolate ganache drip)
Ingredients
Chocolate Cake layers
- 3 ½ cups all purpose flour
- 3 ½ cups granulated sugar
- 1 ¾ cups cocoa powder
- 1 ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ cups unsalted butter (3 sticks, softened)
- 6 large eggs (at room temperature)
- 2 ¼ cups buttermilk
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting
- 8 ounces cream cheese (one package; softened)
- 1 cup butter (two sticks, softened)
- 6 cups powdered sugar
- 1-2 Tablespoons milk
- 1 Tablespoon clear vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon salt (if using unsalted butter)
- ½ cup Rainbow jimmies sprinkles (NOT nonpareils; the color will melt and turn brown! And you can use as many or as few as you’d like; more sprinkles=more color but also a tougher smoothing time.)
Cake drip and decorations
- 12 oz 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
- 12 oz 1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream
- ½ cup Rainbow jimmies sprinkles (additional ½ cup; for the cone, top of the cake, and to add to the drip)
- 1 large waffle cone (you’ll have enough ganache leftover to dip the cone and add sprinkles if you’d like, but this is optional!)
- 1 teaspoon Crisco / vegetable shortening (this will make transferring sprinkles to your drip easy!)
Instructions
Chocolate Cake layers
- Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (180C). Grease 4 8-inch cake pans (or 3 round pans + one additional pan of your choice) with baker's floured spray, or grease and line pans with parchment paper.
- Mix together dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt) in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle (or hand mixer or whisk) until well combined.
- Add in bits of softened butter, mixing until no lumps of butter are visible and the mixture looks crumbly.
- Whisk together eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Add to dry ingredients and mix until no dry ingredients are visible. Scrape down the bowl and beat for another 20 seconds.
- Fill the three round pans evenly – I find a kitchen scale helpful for this part, and each of mine weighed out to about 550g. Pour additional batter into last pan. Bake for 30-35 min or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow cake layers to cool for 10-15 minutes on a wire cooling rack before removing from pans, and cool completely before frosting. Set in the fridge or freezer to accelerate the cooling process if desired.
Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting
- Beat together softened cream cheese and butter; slowly add in powdered sugar alternating with milk until frosting reaches desired consistency. Add vanilla and salt if needed and beat until well combined. Reserve ¼ cup for the cake pop 'ice cream scoop,' and stir rainbow jimmies sprinkles into your remaining frosting.
Cake drip
- Meanwhile, make your ganache. Place chocolate chips in a heat-proof bowl. Add whipping cream and microwave on half power in 30-second intervals, stirring in between until fully melted and smooth.
- (If you’d like to decorate the waffle cone, this is a great time to dip it in the ganache and add a few sprinkles! Set upright in a short glass in the fridge to cool and set the chocolate.)
Assembly
- Once your cakes are cool, level them (if needed). This can be done with a cake leveler or a large serrated knife and a ruler. Place a smear of frosting on your cake circle (to keep the cake from sliding while you decorate it) and center your first cake layer in the center of the circle. Spread the layer with frosting, and add your next cake layer on top. Repeat the process with your remaining cake layers.
- Now you’re ready to crumb-coat . If you’re unfamiliar with crumb-coating, it’s just what it sounds like – a thin layer of frosting over the entire outside of the cake to keep crumbs out of your final layer.
Decorating
- Once your crumb coat has set (this takes about 5-10 minutes in the fridge), add your final layer of frosting and smooth. I like to use an offset spatula and bench scraper for this part – smoothing the frosting with all the sprinkles in the way takes a little more time; go slow and smooth gently! I usually hold the bench scraper at a 90 degree angle when I’m smoothing; I angled it toward me about 45 degrees to smooth this one. That helped smooth in the sprinkles without dragging them.
- Once your cake is covered, place it into the fridge – chilling the frosting a bit will help set the chocolate ganache drips.
Cake pop 'ice cream scoop'
- Mash cake from the 4th pan with reserved frosting to make a thick 'cake pop' mix. Shape about 1 cup of the mixture into an 'ice cream scoop' shape – you can make this as large or small as you'd like! I checked the size against my waffle cone, using a scoop size that would be only partially covered by the cone on top of the cake. Transfer to the top of the cake.
Okaaaay……ganache drip time!
- I always recommend starting with a test drip or two – if the ganache is too thick and doesn't drip well, warm it slightly to make it a bit thinner. If it's too thin, place in the fridge in 5-minute intervals, cooling it until it's thicker.
- Using a squeeze bottle or piping bag, drizzle ganache around the top rim of the cake, letting it run over the edge to form drips down the side of the cake. Spread ganache over the top of the cake as well. Set your cake pop ‘ice cream’ top of your cake. Drizzle the ganache over the cake pop and smooth, and then set your waffle cone upside down on top of the cake pop.
- This part is optional but SO fun – add some more rainbow sprinkles to the top of the cake! Adding sprinkles to the drip is completely optional – it’s a bit time-consuming. But when the drip is semi-set, spreading a bit of Crisco on your finger and transferring rainbow sprinkles to the drips adds a really fun bit of extra color to the cake!
- And you’re done! Enjoy!
Video
Notes
(Please note nutrition information is an estimate, and may not be exactly accurate. Counts will be lower if not all the cake mixture and / or frosting is used for decorating.)
Nutrition
Serving: 1slice (1/16th cake + cake pop cone) | Calories: 897kcal | Carbohydrates: 120g | Protein: 12g | Fat: 41g
Mentioned in post: Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting
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