Remember that job you had in college, the one that was WAY beneath your abilities, but you were sick of/from selling your plasma so you took it? Mine was working as a scooper at Ben & Jerry’s.
The fabulous upside of the job—besides the free half-teaspoon of ice cream you could eat every workday—was working the day shift. No one goes to an ice cream shop before 1 or 2 in the afternoon, so if you worked the day shift, you could put on whatever music you wanted and spend your shift concocting new and exciting ice cream cakes for the store to sell. I made all kinds of cakes, my favorite being a tie-died Cherry Garcia cake to celebrate Jerry’s 60th birthday or something.
Anyway, the cakes are delicious, and we were able to charge an arm and a leg for them, but they’re really not that hard to make. We had all these fancy cake decorating tools and turntables and stuff, and an unlimited supply of ice cream to work with, but you don’t need all that stuff. What follows is my home-brewed method for building the perfect triple-layer brownie-and-ice-cream cake. It takes a couple hours, but it’s not hard or particularly expensive.
Here’s what you’ll need: Brownie mix + ingredients, two pints of ice cream (I used Häagen-Dazs mint and B&J’s Mint Chocolate Cookie), heavy whipping cream, chocolate syrup, and a bar of dark chocolate (though you really just need a piece).
Start baking the brownies in a round cake pan or pie tin. I do this by baking three thin layers of brownie separately…it takes longer, but it looks better. Alternatively, you could just make a full brownie batch and either cut it in half lengthwise for a double-layer cake (works ok, but it’s hard) or crumble the brownies for the crust. But that’s just lazy. To get the perfect brownie crust, pour a third of the batter into a pie tin at a time, and bake at 350 for 16 or 17 mins (until it’s not mushy at all). Use a soft spatula to get it out intact, or throw the whole pie tin in the freezer for a few minutes so you can get it out easier. If the brownie comes apart a bit, don’t worry about it…it’s going to be covered in ice cream/frosting anyway!
While the baking is happening, make your whip cream. Just dump a small carton of heavy whipping cream into a bowl and mix the heck out of it. Wire whisk attachment works best, but I lost mine, which isn’t easy to do in a 10-square-foot kitchen. The whipping should only take a couple minutes, and while you’re mixing, squeeze in enough chocolate syrup to make the frosting light brown. Don’t make it too dark, because we’ll be adding swirls to it later. Once the whip cream is a semi-solid consistency, throw it in the fridge for later.
Once the last batch of brownie batch is done, pop it out of the pie tin or round cake pan and let it cool a bit, then put it back in and start layering the ice cream on top. The order is crust, ice cream, crust, ice cream, crust, (or, slackers can just do two crusts with two pints of ice cream in between). Glop it on there and smooth it out with your spatula. If you’re using the mint cookie ice cream like I was, make sure you dig out all the huge chunks of cookie and eat them yourself. The photo above is of one of the crumbled brownie crusts—still worked great.
Side note: Häagen-Dazs Five white mint ice cream is awesome, and it’s made from only five ingredients: Milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and mint. (I’m not getting paid for this post or anything, just wanted to point out a good new ice cream flavor.)
Ok, as soon as you’re done smoothing out the ice cream and layering the brownies, pop the pie tin back in the freezer for an hour or so. Once it’s good and frozen, it’s time to frost it. This will require some creativity on your part, assuming you don’t have a turntable that you can use (Mindy, use Jeff’s Techniques! They’ll be perfect! Two cakes at once!) I popped the cake out of the pie tin, turned the tin upside down, and put it on top of a metal bowl that spins pretty well on the counter. Then I put the cake on top of the upside down pie tin. Worked and spun pretty well. I also don’t have the official frosting spatula thingy, so I use the back of a straight bread knife. You basically just need something straight and flat—use a ruler if you want!
Glop a pile of whipped cream on top of the cake, and, holding your straight knife or spatula still and slightly diagonal, start turning the pie pan. The straight edge should start smoothing the frosting in the middle and work its way to the edges.
Want spiral swirls? There are a couple ways to do it, but the easiest is to put a few blobs of chocolate sauce on the edge of your straight edge, and then do the spinning-rotating thing again. Just don’t overspin or you’ll mix the extra sauce into the frosting. One spin, or two at most. Which is just as well, because your ice cream’s probably starting to melt at this point.
If your ice cream is melting, throw the cake back in the freezer to solidify before frosting the sides. Otherwise, just glop some frosting on the sides and hold the straight edge vertical while you spin the pie tin to smooth it all out. I like it kinda messy on the sides, but you can make it all smooth and nice if that’s what you’re into.
Last step: put the cake back in the freezer for a few minutes, and shave a piece of dark chocolate into a bowl using a fine cheese grater. Sprinkle the shavings over the top of the cake, throw the whole thing back in the freezer, and you’re DONE.
Give the frosting an hour or so to freeze before eating it, or else you’ll have a mess on your hands. Enjoy!
