Brownies & Ice Cream

What a sweet dessert! I love brownies and I love ice cream. So what to do but pair them together for a sweet cake!

Ok - what really happened! I WAS planning on making my first carved cake for the office birthday cake. I had made the sails and mast out of gumpaste for the sailboat, but unfortunately I discovered the broken sails when I went to assemble them for the cake. I hadn't started the carving yet, but without the sails, it just wasn't a sailboat! So I improvised.

My kids had gotten me a brownie decorating book which I hadn't really done much with. I was at crunch time coming up with an idea for the cake due in 3 days.... my weekend had been spent in making a Confirmation cake for my son and entertaining the guests. Looking through the book, I found the brownie layer cake. Ah hah! Inspiration has struck! A quick run to the store for brownies mixes and Tillamook vanilla ice cream and I was set!

I baked the brownies in a round cake pan and put the softened ice cream in a round cake pan lined with plastic wrap. Once the ice cream was hardened it was a simple matter to stack the layers. I found out a couple of things though. 1) You can't crumb coat and ice cream cake. 2) Ice it fast because it melts really quickly! I spent most of my time putting on a layer of chocolate buttercream and sticking it in the freezer. Pull it out, ice another section, back in the freezer. Rinse & repeat until the cake was completely covered. I put Whoppers around the base, did a basic shell border on the top and put more Whoppers around the top and in the center. The circles are left over colored fondant (from various projects) that I cut out with the back end of a piping tip.

The verdict at work "the best one evah!". It must be so, because I got an order for a 6 year olds birthday cake for the end of June. :-) Best advertising evah!