Ice cream cake

Yesterday was my husband's birthday.  To celebrate, he went to school.  That's what poor student families do on birthdays.  We did go out to dinner tonight and then we came home to sing to him and eat this.


That is an ice cream cake.  I did dump it out on a sheet to decorate it, but the sheet wouldn't fit back into the freezer, so back into the cake pan it went.  It is covered in caramel and chocolate sauce.  I was going for a completely homemade cake, but I didn't have enough home made ice cream left.
Here's how I made it:
Bake a cake, whatever flavor you want.  I was going to buy a rainbow chip mix because he likes that, but he opted for a caramel theme, so I made chocolate.  In the past, I have used two cake pans, one to bake the cake and one to form the ice cream, but I only have one this size... 
Smear the top of the cake with your favorite ice cream sauce.  We've done fudge before, oreo crumbs would be great in there too.  For this cake I used the caramel that was left over from our apples and caramel night and chocolate sauce that was left in the fridge from when we made the homemade ice cream.  Who knew that birthday cakes could use so many leftovers?
 
It's hard to see in this picture, but I have covered the cake with caramel and then chocolate on top of that.  Then fill it in with ice cream.  I did a small layer of homemade vanilla ice cream, then more caramel and chocolate, and then another layer of ice cream from the store.  You could get crazy with flavors of ice cream too, but with so much already going on with the cake, I stick with vanilla.  At this point, I stick the pan into the freezer to harden up the ice cream again.

After a while, take it back out and flip it upside down onto a sheet, or whatever you plan to serve the cake on.  Make sure you have a spot for it in the freezer before you start so you don't have to try to get it back into it's cake pan like I did.

At this point, the ice cream layers are on bottom and the cake is bottom up on top.  Spread more ice cream on the whole thing, basically frosting it with more ice cream.   Drizzle caramel and chocolate on top and stick in the freezer. 

At party time, take out of the freezer and enjoy!  This was way too sweet for me, but hubby and the kids liked it.

My first ever baking day Tuesday!

Maybe.  Tuesday might not work every week.  It felt like I was baking almost every day, and there are other things I want to do with my afternoons, so I declared yesterday baking day for the week. 

Originally, I had planned to get started immediately in the morning, but my brain doesn't kick in till about 10, so I got a late start.  My 4 year old helped, so that took a bit more time, but we made a lot!  We made bread dough and then made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies while the bread was rising.  Then we punched down the dough and made these oat muffins -still using up apples-while the bread rose again.  Then I remembered that hubby's birthday is this week and I should have made a cake instead of cookies, so after the kids were in bed, I made a little chocolate cake.

The grand tally:
3 loaves of bread
8 rolls (because I only  have 3 bread pans)
2 dozen crumbly cookies -not sure what happened
18 muffins
1 9x9 chocolate cake
1 bowl of cookie dough, because it makes me happy

I wanted to share my cookie recipe, because I love these cookies so much, and with the oatmeal, I can pretend that they are healthy.  I've honestly been making this recipe since I was a little girl.  I'm not sure why they fell apart, maybe I didn't let them sit on the pan long enough.  They still taste good though.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
4 Tbs milk
4 cups rolled oats
1 cup chocolate chips, or raisins if you really want to be healthy, or dates or nuts...

Preheat oven to 375
Sift flour with soda and salt into mixing bowl.
Add butter, sugar, brown sugar, egg, vanilla and milk.  Mix until smooth.
Add rolled oats and chocolate chips.
Drop by spoonful on ungreased cookie sheet about 2" apart.
Bake for 10-12 minutes

*food storage friendly changes:
add egg powder, butter powder, or milk powder with dry ingredients, then add needed water when recipe calls for milk.
I used 4 Tbs egg powder and 1/2 cup water in place of the eggs, and 8 tsp powdered milk and 1/4 cup water.