Miniature Ice Cream Cakes!

Bloggy buddies, have I got a treat for you!

But first, I must share with you the Cutest Bit Of Cuteness Ever:

Yes, our littlest one is all kinds of smiley now.  I love it!

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, let’s talk dessert:

My sister’s 40th birthday was this weekend and she celebrated it by camping out at a local natural spring.  Even with the rain, it was a beautiful place – the spring water is this perfect pale turquoise, and maintains a chilly 68° that feels wonderful in the middle of our Florida summer heat.  Oh, and there are Koi that will come right up to the dock and take bread out of your hands! I wasn’t able to get any great pictures because of the rain – didn’t want to water my camera – but it really was lovely.

So when I asked Le Sis what kind of birthday treat she’d like, she said anything – but she did mention that her favorite ice cream was Mocha Mudslide.  This got my little brain-wheels turning.  Seeing as how her celebration was being held outdoors and it’s currently in the 90’s around here, I wasn’t sure how I could pull off an ice cream cake without it melting as soon as it was cut into.  Plus, who wants to deal with plates and forks and cutting utensils at a campsite where the kids are gonna be running in and out of the water and whatnot?  I thought about cake pops, of course…but she had specifically mentioned this ice cream so I wanted to incorporate it somehow.  That’s when I had the best idea ever.  I baked up a chocolate fudge cake (box mix again…I didn’t have enough time to go the whole “scratch” route) and then crumbled it up into little bits, just like I do when making cake pops.

Now my original thought was that I was going to try to make little individual ice cream cakes, that actually looked like decorated cakes….so I started out trying to shape my ice cream into cylinders, which I did by scooping the ice cream onto a piece of saran wrap and shaping it inside the wrap, like so:

which worked pretty well, but I started running out of time and patience so I ended up making ice cream cake balls instead.  So once I had my ice cream in individual servings, one by one I took them out of the freezer and patted the cake crumbles all around them, until there was about 1/2″ of cake surrounding the ice cream ball.  YUM.

Then I made a batch of Swiss Meringue Buttercream ala The Tough Cookie.  If you’ve never tried SMB, click that link back there and check it out.  It really is a much “cleaner” and milder icing – I really liked it with the cake, as it lets the cake be the star instead of throwing it’s own overpowering sweetness on top like regular buttercream.  But if you’re one of those folks who eats cake just so they can scrape all the extra icing from the edges, this might be too tame for you.

Yes, I realize I am winning no decorating prizes for these, but they were GOOD.  And EASY.  And perfect for eating out by the water, without needing any extra stuff.  My Sis totally thought they were “just” cupcakes at first…she was so excited and happy when she bit into one and discovered her favorite ice cream.  Seriously.  These guys were a total hit.  Yay!

I meant to take a picture of the cooler, too – $1.99 for a styrofoam cooler at the Wal-Marts, wrap the bottom and the lid in pretty paper and top it with a bow – totally cool presentation.  (Get it?  Cool presentation??)

Of course I used the leftover cake crumbs to make a few miniatures, which I think would be great for a potluck surprise, or just to keep in the freezer as a tasty treat!

And ya know, the combinations here are endless – for my bites I used Breyers’ chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.  So good!

Go ahead….have your cake and ice cream, too.

Becki

Tagged as: birthday cake, camp food, ice cream cake balls