Sunday, April 25, 2010

Chocolate Coffee Ice Cream Cake


Now that I'm free and in the clear school-wise, my friends have been sending me links to recipes they know I have plenty of time to try out. This unique ice cream cake was at the top of the "Tina, please make this for us!" list. 


The recipe called for cake mix. Usually, I try to stay away from boxed mixes. I just feel so much more accomplished when I make things from scratch, you know? But no one can a culinary superstar all the time, and there's just no denying that sometimes boxed mixes just taste better.


So, what's so special about this cake? It's made with ice cream! But not like a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake, where there's a layer of ice cream sandwiched between layers of cake. Here, the ice cream is literally mixed into the batter. For this cake, I chose coffee flavored ice cream.


The ice cream in this recipe acts like a substitute for milk in a regular chocolate cake, but the resulting batter is a lot creamier in consistency.


The batter looks a lot like melted ice cream going into the oven, but it turns out to be a pretty nice cake. Just be sure to thoroughly grease and flour (I dusted with cocoa powder) your bundt cake pan, or you'll end up with only half the cake on your plate like I did. Ugh.


I am absolutely going to add ice cream to every cake I bake from now on. I couldn't really taste coffee at all, but the cake was unbelievably moist and soft -- probably the best cake I've ever made. Chocolate ganache was a great touch, but the cake is so good by itself I may not use any kind of icing next time.

Recipe and backstory can be found here.

3 comments:

Leslie said...

I am totally baking this cake...I will keep you posted on the cake/ice cream flavour combo I end up choosing.

karl said...

hmmm...that's kinda cool. I wonder if it stays moist because of the extra fats in the ice cream or because the batter temperature is lower to start.

justputzing said...

Maybe it's a little bit of both? Figures you'd want to know the science behind it ;p Indian Alton Brown?