Birthday Cake

My husband's birthday was on November 11 and he asked for an ice cream cake.  For years, I purchased a Carvel cake, but lately the quality of the cake, has gone downhill.  I tried Coldstone for my daughter's birthday.  After paying $40.00, I thought I was going to get a delicious cake, but was thoroughly disappointed.  I'm not the greatest baker, but thought I would try my hand at making an ice cream cake. How hard could it be?  It's only cake and ice cream….

I went online and read some directions. I even watched some videos on youtube.  "Piece of cake," I thought…sorry for the pun.

The recipe calls for cake…I chose Chocolate and two ice creams.  One for the center…I chose Cookies and Cream, and one for the icing…I chose Vanilla.

Here's what I did.

I made a boxed cake and placed it in an 8 X 9 inch pan and baked it for 33 minutes at 350 degrees.

This is how the cake turned out.

While the cake was baking, I took out the ice cream so it would soften.  I took a pan, the same size as the cake pan, placed wax paper in the bottom and sides (for easy removal), and spread out the entire container of ice cream.

I covered the pan with waxed paper and placed in the freezer.  I kept it in there for an hour.  That gave time for the cake to cool down completely before doing the next step.

I placed the ice cream on top of the cake.

I needed to trim the sides so the ice cream and cake were the same size.  In the meantime, I took out the vanilla ice cream so it would soften.

  

I took the vanilla ice cream and iced the top and sides the same way as you would use icing on a cake.

I placed the finished cake back in the freezer with a plastic cover.  I left it in there for 2 hours.  I took it out 15 minutes before we actually cut into it.  

It was good, but not great.  My family said to use a brownie mix instead of the cake mix.  I would have to experiment with different ice creams to figure out which one would be the best to use.

Does anyone have any suggestions?  

Have you ever purchased an ice cream cake, and if so, where did you go?