The brilliance of this cake is that you can use any ice cream or gelato that you love. You can make it completely chocolate or strawberry or vanilla or Neapolitan or coffee, any flavour really that goes with a chocolate crumb base. It can be your favourite flavour. Now, what just crossed my mind is you can change the base to something like I use for my passionfruit cheesecake slice and top that with tropical flavoured ice creams like mango and passionfruit. The flavour combinations are completely up to you.
One day I will actually make my own ice cream, just because I like doing it. Keep an eye out for the ice creams I make, very simple.
Now also what is important here is as this cake can be made well in advance, at least a month in advance, so buy the biscuits and ice cream when they are on sale and keep them at home until needed. An expensive ice cream is sometimes half price, buy it when it is at it's cheapest, otherwise you may as well buy a ready made cake, because at full price the expensive ice creams can cost around $10 a litre. This cake using expensive ice cream should not cost you more than $40-$45 to make. Keep in mind though you can make this for as little as $25 if using cheaper brands that still taste great.
Now I do tell you to buy 2-3 litres of ice cream because for this cake you want to fill up the whole cake tin. And for me to go to this effort and not have enough would be annoying, so I would rather have a little more ice cream, than not enough. Plus what is left gets frozen and eaten at a later date.
Now with the butter, you may not use the whole 180g, just add enough to have a moist crumb, not soaking wet. I also used Oreo's for the base as we love them.
Please don't serve thick slices of this cake, especially to kids, as you will have a lot of left over cake wasted. Thin slices are enough as the slices are quite tall. Plus if someone wants more they can have a second slice.
Don't feel like making a stressful cake, give this a go, too easy, yet very impressive.
Recipe
2-3 litres vanilla ice cream
2-3 litres cookies and cream ice cream
Biscuit shell:
600g chocolate cream filled biscuits
180g unsalted butter, melted
7 Oreos, extra for decorating
To make the biscuit shell: Place the biscuits in a food processor and blitz until you get the consistency of coarse breadcrumbs. Pour into a large bowl.
Add enough butter to moisten the biscuits, stir well to combine.
Lightly grease a 23-25cm round, deep sided, loose bottomed tin.
Pour in the crumb mixture, reserve about 1 cup of crumbs to spread over the top of the cake, and using your hands or the back of a spoon, press the mixture into the base and up the sides of the tin. Make sure the base edge is not too thick, use your hands to make as thin as you can. Freeze for 30 minutes or until firm.
Line a small baking tray with baking paper. From the vanilla ice cream, make 7 scoops of ice cream and place them on the baking tray. Place in the freezer immediately. These will be used for decorating the top of your cake.
Now with the remaining vanilla ice cream spoon about half of the vanilla ice cream into a large bowl, and using a spoon, mix and mash it up gently, so you can get it to a thick spreadable consistency, don't soften it too much though. Spoon in enough vanilla ice cream into the base of the shell to give you about a 1cm layer, spread it out evenly. Freeze for 20 minutes or until just firm. Freeze the remaining vanilla ice cream until needed later.
Take the cookies and cream ice cream out of the refrigerator 10-20 minutes before needed, to soften. Spoon it all into a large bowl, and using a spoon, mix and mash it up gently, so you can get it to a thick spreadable consistency. Spoon the cookies and cream ice cream into the base of the shell and spread it out evenly. Add enough cookies and cream ice cream so that you leave about 1cm free from the top of the tin. Now you can add on the remaining vanilla ice cream, again aiming to get a 1cm layer. Freeze for 20 minutes or until just firm.
Now sprinkle over the reserved cookie crumbs. Freeze for 2-3 hours.
Now add on the vanilla ice cream scoops and decorate with the extra Oreo's. Freeze uncovered for about 1 hour. After 1 hour quickly cover the cake with a layer of baking paper then aluminium foil. Close to cover completely and freeze overnight.
Enjoy!
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