Flower Cake

Ashlyn wanted an ice cream cake this year. It's a good thing I went easy on the decorations because the cake took me about 7 hours to do!

The cake is a Betty Crocker chocolate and vanilla marble cake and has has vanilla Betty Crocker frosting. I used Blue Bunny chocolate ice cream inside.

I baked the cake according to the package directions. When it was cool, I leveled out the tops of all the layers. I let the ice cream soften and then stirred it so there weren't any 'drippy' parts. (You want it firm enough that it doesn't just smoosh out the sides of the cake when you put it together.)

I placed two long sheets of plastic wrap on the counter, one going side to side and the other one top going up and down. I put the bottom layer of the cake down in the center of the plastic wrap. I spread on the ice cream about 1 or 2 inches thick, and then put the top layer of cake on. I wrapped the cake in the plastic wrap and put it in the freezer for about 1 hour. I did the same thing with the smaller two layers of cake. Ideally, you would do this and put it in the freezer overnight and finish up the next day. I didn't have that much time!

When the cake and ice cream layers were frozen, I took them out of the freezer, took off the plastic wrap, put the larger layer on a cake plate, put a smudge of frosting on the top and centered the smaller cake layers on top. I then put a very light coating of frosting all around the cake. (A crumb coat.) Then I put it back in the fridge becausethe ice cream started to melt. Once the ice cream was set again, I frosted the entire cake, smoothing out the sides as much as I could.

I took flowers from the craft store and cut off the blooms, leaving about 3 inches of stem. I placed these in the top layer of the cake. I then wrapped a ribbon around each layer. I secured the ribbon to itself with double sided tape.

The ice cream melting was my biggest problem. I would be in the middle of doing something with it, and see ice cream starting to leak out the bottom and so I'd have to put it in the freezer for a half hour or so. Like I said before, if you can let the ice cream set overnight in the freezer, it would be much easier to work with!

If this had been a regular cake with just frosting in the middle, I would've been done in a flash! Oh well, it tasted DELICIOUS! It was worth all the time and effort.