Ice Cream Cake Recipe - Summer Must!

Ok, so my favorite food group is sugar (followed by vegetables, weird I know) and if I had to pick an all time favorite food it would probably be ice cream.  Anyone who says something bad about ice cream clearly doesn't know what they are talking about so you should disregard their opinions all together (I'm joking ice cream haters, chill out and try it in a waffle cone!)  With this love of ice cream and a birthday in July, you can imagine that my birthday always included ice cream and one of my favorite birthday cake memories was the year I got a Dairy Queen Ice Cream cake.  It was decorated like a watermelon and of all the ice cream cakes that are out there, there's is the ONLY one that counts in my book.  It doesn't have any actual cake in it (important for a great ice cream cake) and has a layer of chocolate ice cream followed by a layer of fudge and cookie crunch then a vanilla layer on top.  It's then "iced" and decorated with cool whip and it will change your life. 

However, the story isn't all good.  My family and I moved to Oklahoma the end of my sophomore year and sadly Dairy Queens are quickly becoming extinct in Oklahoma and if you DO find one, it probably doesn't sell cakes (unless you are lucky enough to live in Okmulgee).  My family has done a few trips to get a cake that involved long drives and giant coolers.  As my mom's birthday approached this year (and she had not so subtly requested an ice cream cake) my brother and I tried to find one.  Nothing seemed to work out and the other ice cream cakes just didn't stack up.  That's when I remembered a recipe to make one from Food Network Magazine (I highly recommend this magazine!).  It was super easy to make and it lived up to the greatness of the DQ cake!  Isn't it beautiful!

My mom likes strawberries so I used Blue Bell Vanilla with Strawberries ice cream for both layers.  This was an easy cake to do, it just takes time to let it freeze up before the next step.  Actual putting it together probably took 20 minutes, the rest was all freeze time.  So, if you want to make one of these delicious cakes for the summer, here is the recipe.

A few changes I made:

• I didn't do the thin vanilla layer at the bottom, I just did a layer of ice cream, fudge crunch, another layer of ice cream.
• In the middle layer I crunched up chocolate teddy grahams.  I did mix the teddy grahams and fudge together but it lost some of the crunch.  The next time I make it I am going to do a layer of fudge then poor the cookie crunch on top and another layer of fudge then refreeze.
• If you don't want to decorate with the pastry bag or don't have tips, no biggie!  Just use candy or sprinkles or whatever you want!  Maybe put crushed oreo up the side and use cookies n cream ice cream, the possibilities are endless!

Hope you enjoy this as much as I did!  All this typing is making me hungry, I'm going to go finish that baby off!