We just celebrated our daughter’s 4th year old birthday. A birthday celebration will not be complete without a birthday cake. A few months before her party, I was searching for her birthday cake. I wanted to have a healthier cake for her but to order a gluten-free customized cake for more than 40 guests would burn a big hole in my pocket.
The fondant animal cupcakes and fondant birthday cake that my sister bought for Dot’s first birthday costed more than $200.00. The fondant cakes looked very pretty but they were too high in sugar content and definitely not healthy. Most of our guests scrapped off the thick sugar coating and only ate the cake inside. There was so much wastage.
After some research, I decided to take a risk by making our first homemade ice-cream cake for her birthday, using organic vanilla ice-cream and wild berry frozen yogurt. I planned and wrote down how her cake would be layered and the decoration on the cake. I was 80% confident that the cake would turn out well, because I know the taste of all the ingredients will not change for this no-bake cake. Nevertheless, the 20% of uncertainty made me a little nervous.
I only started to make the ice-cream cake a day before the actual party. On the actual party day in the morning, I made the final ganache layer on the ice-cream cake and then froze it. When it was about time to sing the birthday song for Dot, I brought the cake out and decorated it with a few pinch of green tea, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts and the animal figurines.
The verdict came after Dot blew her candles and the cutting of the cake for all our guests. Most of the guests gave me thumb-ups. I was definitely thrilled to know that the adults and children love the cake.
Preparation time: 2 hours
Waiting time: 3-24 hours
Serve 40
Ingredients:
- 4 litres of ice-cream, soften – organic vanilla ice-cream; and wild berry frozen yogurt
- 2 x 283g Ghirardelli 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips
- 300ml Bulla thickened cream
- 4 Bananas
- 400g McVities digestive biscuits
- 75g Butter
Decoration ingredients:
- Dried green tea leaves
- Pumpkin seeds
- Pine nuts
- Animal figurines
Step by step instructions:
- Crush all the biscuits in the 12″ square baking dish.
- Melt the butter and mix with the crushed biscuits; press the mixture evenly onto the baking dish. Put in the freezer for 10 minutes.
- Add a layer of vanilla ice-cream on the hardened crust. Put back into the fridge for 30 minutes.
- While the ice-cream cake is in the fridge, prepare the mixture of melted chocolate and banana. Melt the chocolate chips over a pot of boiling water. Add and mix the mashed banana to the melted chocolate. Add the mixture as another layer onto the ice-cream. Put it into the freezer for another 30 minutes.
- Add a layer of wild berry frozen yogurt over the hardened chocolate and banana; and freeze.
- To make chocolate ganache, heat the thickened cream over a pot of boiling water, add one pack of the chocolate chips to melt in the hot cream. Let the mixture cools for 5-10 minutes then pour it over the ice-cream cake. Freeze it until it’s ready to be consumed.
- Decorate the ice-cream cake as desired.
Note: I cling-wrapped the ice-cream cake/dish every time I put them in the freezer.
