Melissa's Table Original: Ice Cream Cake

I'm going to do something a little different today, and post a semi-original recipe.

Tuesday 09/11 was my husband's 28th birthday. He asked that I not get him a gift because he was holding out for the new iPhone 5. We have a system of upgrade in our household. He got the iPhone 3, I got the 3gs. He got the iPhone 4, I got the 4s. He'll get the iPhone 5, I'll get the iPhone 5xkg or whatever letter combination Apple uses. So in lieu of a present, I baked him a cake. But not just any cake, an ice cream cake!

I call this a "semi" original because I modified three different recipes to make it.

1. The Ice Cream Cake Recipe – I used this recipe to build the cake, but I made a few changes because my husband hates chocolate, and I wanted to make the cake and icing from scratch.
2. David’s Yellow Cake Recipe – I chose this recipe for the cake part of the cake and halved all of the ingredients.
3. Quick Almost Professional Buttercream Icing – And I went with this recipe for the icing and doubled the ingredients.

I made yellow cake and buttercream icing because my husband doesn't like chocolate. If you want chocolate, you can always modify my modified recipe. The only thing I didn't make myself was the ice cream. Yeah, I just wasn't going there. Here is my recipe (melded from those above) for Melissa's Semi-Original Semi-Homemade Ice Cream Cake.

Ice Cream
As I mentioned, I did not make my own ice cream. I used one 1/2 gallon carton of Breyers Oreo Birthday Blast, but any ice cream flavor will do. Just make sure you buy the kind that comes in the rectangular carton, not the round containers (ie. Edy's).

Yellow Cake
Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter (softened)
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 egg yolks, 1 whole egg
• 1/4 cup plus 2 table spoons milk
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour an 8 inch round pan. (I used extra virgin coconut oil.) Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
2. In a separate large bowl, cream together the room temperature butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the milk, mixing just until incorporated. Pour batter into prepared pans.
3. Bake about 25 minutes. Cool 15 minutes before turning out onto cooling racks. Be sure the cake is completely cooled (room temperature or cooler) before building the ice cream cake.

Buttercream Icing

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 3 to 4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted*
• 1/4 cup milk
• 6 drops food coloring, or as needed (optional)

*The actual recipe calls for four cups, but I found this icing to be extremely sweet especially when slathered on top of ice cream. When the cake and ice cream melted together, my husband called it "diabetic soup." Sugar at your own discretion.

Directions

1. Cream (mix) butter with a hand mixer, the paddle attachment of a stand mixer, or a wooden spoon until smooth and fluffy. Gradually beat in confectioners' sugar until fully incorporated. Beat in vanilla extract.
2. Pour in milk and beat for an additional 3-4 minutes. Add food coloring, if using, and beat for thirty seconds until smooth or until desired color is reached.

Building the Cake

1. Remove ice cream from the carton. (You may need to cut the carton to get the ice cream out in one big hunk.) Cut the ice cream in half lengthwise (long side to long side) and place the two layers side by side on a piece of waxed paper.
2. Spread icing on top of the ice cream.
3. Place the cooled cake over the ice cream. Trim the cake and ice cream so that the edges match.
4. Place a board or serving platter over the cake. Hold onto the waxed paper and board, and flip so that the ice cream is on top of the cake.
5. Remove the waxed paper and smooth out the seam between the ice cream slabs.
6. Cover with waxed paper (or platter lid) and freeze until very firm.
7. Decorate with icing and store in the freezer until eating time!

I used teal food coloring, so mine looked like this.

My icing was a little messy, but oh so tasty!

When cut, it looked like this.

So sweet and yummy!

So there you have it. My variation of ice cream cake. The cake gets a bit hard in the freezer, so I'd recommend letting it sit out for a few minutes before eating.

Enjoy!

Easiest Peanut Butter Fudge

(Original post August 11, 2012 @ mtable.wordpress.com.)

For this post, I was planning on telling a lovely story about how much I love chocolate, and how much my clearly deranged husband hates it. Hence, the peanut butter fudge instead of chocolate fudge. But instead I'm going to complain.

Before I pin a recipe, I always click on the link. I like to check out the ingredients and, when it's a blog, I enjoy reading what the blogger has to say. So it annoys me greatly when I pin a promising recipe only to come back a week later to find this:

AMG REPORTED!

Really? Because I visited the site and found no spam or inappropriate content. In fact, I clicked on this particular recipe at least twice. Once when I discovered it, and once when I made it; however when I went to click on it just a moment ago, I received the grey Pinterest screen of death. This is the second time this has happened to me. I went in search of the original link and found it. I still couldn't find any spam or inappropriate content. It's just a forum with a recipe that I want. Because I hate having broken pins laying around on my Pinterest boards, I did a search and found the recipe at Allrecipe.com. It's exactly the same as my inappropriate pin. It even uses the same image. I'm guessing the original link that I'd pinned was copied directly from Allrecipe.com. Is that a reportable offense or are  people just dicks who get their jollies reporting things for no real reason?

Okay, I feel better. Now that that's out of the way. Let's get to the foods!

The Pin: Easiest Peanut Butter Fudge by AllRecipe.com

Difficulty: 2 (1 = Opening Potato Chips, 10 = Baked Alaska)

Let's get makin'!

Sooooooooo much sugar!

It's simple to make. The instructions are super short. "Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in brown sugar and milk. Bring to a boil and boil for 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter and vanilla. Pour over confectioners sugar in a large mixing bowl. Beat until smooth; pour into an 8x8 inch dish. Chill until firm and cut into squares."

Here is the the warm mixture freshly poured. It looks a lot like I dumped peanut butter into a pan.

The waiting is the hardest part.

I covered the pan and popped it in the fridge. It took forever to cool. Okay, it didn't really take that long, but I was ready to eat it warm with a spoon. Eventually, it cooled and was ready to nom!

Left: Mine - Right: AllRecipe.com

There's nothing like peanut butter flavored sugar. Just one piece and I think I almost went into a diabetic coma. Yeah, it's just that good. I'm not certain, but it might be addictive. You have been warned, it's super sweet, but it's one of those sweets that's difficult to stop eating. All day I've been popping into the fridge for a piece. Bottom line, if you're on a diet, you may want to give this one a miss, but if you're not and you like sweet things, make this! Make it now!

Final Rating: 9 (1 - Terribad, 10 - Mouthwatering)