Easy Ice Cream Cake

by Sabrina Snyder

Published on Last updated

9 Comments

5 from 5 votes
8 servings
Prep Time 15 minutes
Freezing Time 4 hours
Total Time 4 hours 15 minutes
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Chocolate and Strawberry Ice cream cake that’s great for birthday parties! You (and kids!) can make in minutes, and decorate it with your favorite toppings!

We’ve made an Ice Cream Sandwich. We’ve made an Ice Cream Bar. We’ve even made an Ice Cream Burger. Now, get ready for ice cream cake! Our recipe is a delicious blend of chocolate and strawberry ice cream over fluffy pound cake.

ICE CREAM CAKE

So you want an ice cream cake, but you don’t have time to battle with cake batter made from scratch. You also don’t want to pick up an impersonal one from the store. Our cake recipe is the best of both worlds: all you have to do is assemble, freeze and eat it.

All you have to do is go pick up some pound cake from your grocery store, along with two flavors of ice cream. We chose strawberry and chocolate ice cream because of how well the two flavors go together, but feel free to pick any kind you like. You can mix and match your favorite flavors for whoever’s birthday cake it is, from cookie dough to mint chocolate chip ice cream.

If you want to really impress your friends and family, you can make your own Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream and Vanilla Pound Cake to use for this easy recipe. We used the pre-made variety because this recipe is all about a quick and easy dessert hack, a fun treat to make with your kids and also because slicing into the frozen pound cake is just so much fun.

If you liked this cake, there are plenty of others! Try our Best Oreo Cheesecake, Chocolate Chip Pizookie, or Chocolate Cake Roll.

How to an Make Ice Cream Cake:

  • Let your ice cream sit out long enough for it to be easily moldable, but not runny.
  • Line the loaf pan with plastic wrap (trust me, it makes getting the frozen cake out so much easier).
  • Cut the pound cake into three horizontal pieces and set the lowest sliced piece into the bottom of the pan.
  • Scoop out the chocolate ice cream and spread it over the pound cake as evenly as you can.
  • Put the middle piece of cake back on top of the ice cream layer.
  • Do the same thing again with your strawberry ice cream and cap the whole thing off with the top piece of cake.
  • Once it’s all put together, wrap the plastic wrap over it tightly and set it in the freezer for 4 hours.

Sliced Ice Cream Cake on Plate

FROSTING AND TOPPINGS

Once your cake is completely frozen, you can dress it up with some frosting. Here are some we recommend:

Ice Cream Cake Toppings:

If you aren’t happy with just frosting the cake, you can add more toppings to dress it up.

  • Chocolate Ganache: cut fudge squares into various shapes to make designs for a very fancy presentation, or try drizzling hot fudge sauce over the top for a whole different effect. Chocolate and caramel are the most popular, but feel free to experiment.
  • Whipped Cream: make your own from heavy cream or just grab a tub of cool whip (or use my Homemade Cool Whip version.)
  • Crumbled cookies: find a cookie with a flavor that compliments the ice cream in your cake, and crumble them over the top. To make them into a finer topping, put them in the food processor for a few seconds until they are the right size for what you’re going for. One of our all-time favorites are Oreo cookies.
  • Chocolate pieces: take chocolate candies, unwrap them and set them in a circle on the top of the cake over dollops of frosting. This is an easy way to make the cake look fancy without spending hours icing it.
  • Fresh fruit: with the right flavor of ice cream, fresh fruit can add an extra pop of flavor. Cut them into a variety of shapes and arrange them on the top of the cake to make your dessert colorful as well as tasty. You can even dot the sides with any fruit about the size and shape of a blueberry.
  • Chopped nuts: nuts give your cake some crunch, and we would suggest using pecans, walnuts or chopped peanuts.

ICE CREAM CAKE FUN FACTS

Here are some fun facts about your dessert so that they can sound cool at dinner parties.

  • Ice cream cake comes from the Victorian era, when people used to mix together ice cream and fruit in fancy moulds, kind of like trifle. They used to be called Bombes, and were a very popular dessert for the upper class. Someone had the great idea to add cake to the moulds, and the rest, they say, is history.
  • Shockingly, ice cream cake hasn’t really caught on in the rest of the world yet, but Canadians and Americans love it, and can you really blame us?
  • The first American ice cream recipe was written down by none other than Thomas Jefferson around 1790.
  • The world’s favorite flavor is vanilla ice cream (mine too), according to Ben and Jerry’s website (we’d consider them experts.)

STORING

  • Serve: since two of the main ingredients are ice cream, you shouldn’t leave your cake out at room temperature for very long at all, no longer than 2 hours tops. After that, it will be a gooey, mushy mess. Also, don’t store your ice cream cake in the fridge unless you want it to turn into soup.
  • Freeze: you can store ice cream cake in the fridge for up to 3 months tightly wrapped.

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Dinner, then Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

Chocolate and Strawberry Ice Cream Cake that's great for birthday parties! You (and kids!) can make in minutes, and decorate it with your favorite toppings!
Yield 8 servings
Prep Time 15 minutes
Total Time 4 hours 15 minutes
Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Author Sabrina Snyder
PrintRate

Ingredients
 

Instructions

  • Slice the pound cake horizontally into three pieces.
  • Line the pan with plastic wrap and place the bottom piece of pound cake back in.
  • Add the chocolate ice cream over the layer evenly then place the middle cake layer on top.
  • Add the strawberry ice cream evenly over the layer then place the top cake layer on top.
  • Wrap the plastic wrap tightly over the cake and re-freeze for at least 4 hours before serving.
  • Top with your favorite dessert toppings.

Nutrition

Calories: 209kcal | Carbohydrates: 37g | Protein: 4g | Fat: 6g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Cholesterol: 54mg | Sodium: 235mg | Potassium: 145mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 20g | Vitamin A: 240IU | Vitamin C: 2.1mg | Calcium: 83mg | Iron: 1.3mg
Keyword: How to Make Ice Cream Cake, Ice Cream Cake

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Sliced ice cream cake on a plate and in a pan

About the Author: Sabrina Snyder

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the cookbook Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients, published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

See more posts by Sabrina

Dinner, then Dessert, Inc. owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this site unless authorization is given. If you enjoyed the recipe and would like to publish it on your own site, please re-write it in your own words, and link back to my site and recipe page. Read my disclosure and copyright policy. This post may contain affiliate links.

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Comments

  2. I love that it looks so fancy but is so easy to make! I bet it would be even tastier with my homemade pound cake. Can’t wait to try it!

    Reply