Cake #9 - Peppermint Ice Cream Candyland Cake by Mindy

I was waiting for Sherie to post first on this cake because she was rock star enough to complete the damn thing.

First, I should be honest that this cake bore the brunt of me trying to do too many things at once with not enough time. It never fails. I suppose if I ever start going to see a therapist, I should let him/her read my blog posts, and I'm sure s/he will say that I have a problem with time management. As a result of my time problem: no candy brittle. All of a sudden, I was faced with accomplishing that portion of the cake with a crowd of family arrived for Christmas Eve dinner, and since I was already afraid of making the candy, I bailed rather than fail in front of others.

Anyway, in brief, while the cake was tasty, I don't think that it was any more tasty than an ice cream cake you might buy at your local Baskin Robbins. And, I think that a lot of that had to do with the quality of my ice cream. I was spoiled by 3+ years in New England. I now have a preference for really top quality ice cream. The only ice cream that I could find was made by Deans. Which was fine, but not special. If it's not worthy of eating a big bowl of on its own, is it really worthy enough to be made into a cake? Can me an ice cream snob (and, I am), Deans does not have that wonderful rich mouth feel of a Toscanini's, JP Licks, or Lizzy's. If you had really special ice cream (c'mon Sher, Christina's didn't have peppermint ice cream that would have set you back $40?), it might be worth it to make this cake. And while the cake portion was very tasty and probably better than any available in a Baskin Robins cake, when cake is frozen, it's hard to really appreciate its great taste.

That being said, as mentioned, time was my problem. While my cakes were thoroughly frozen, and my ice cream softened, I did not have time to let the middle layer of ice cream set up before "frosting" the rest. The result was a big mess. When my ice cream softened, it was soupy in some places and frozen in others. In retrospect, I might have had more success, if I had given the ice cream a really good stir to fix the consistency before trying to use it. But, have I mentioned I was out of time?

Here it doesn't look to melty and ugly and messy....but wait for it:

So, I had a time crunch in the frosting, and then I found that an hour plus is actually not enough time for the whole cake to set up. As a result, when I sliced the cake, it looked like this:
A big mess. But, a big mess that could be easily rectified by pouring chocolate sauce all over it. That chocolate sauce really elevated things. Of course, no picture. I did not bring the cake to the table, and other slices looked better than this, so I don't think that my guests were repulsed by the look of the cake. It was eaten with compliments.

The next day, when I pulled the cake out of the freezer to saw it in half (half went in the trash, half went into a tupperware container for future eating), the layers stayed together and actually looked pretty good.

And since I cut the cake and stored it properly? Not a single bite has been eaten. No one in my family is interested. The ultimate failure of a cake!