It's Hot as Fuck, So You Should Make This Ice Cream Cake

It’s too goddamned hot to do anything but cry in front of an air conditioner — hoping the cool breeze will freeze the tears to your face, creating saline icicles that will further cool you. However, if you are like me and do not have an air conditioner — not even a shitty wall unit! Please cry for me! — your only solution is to eat ice cream. Like, a lot of it. All the time. For survival.

The best way to do this is to eat an entire cake made of the stuff. Fuck an oven, this shit is heat-free in 2013. Since I’m vegan, I can’t just stick my face in a Cookie Puss* and be done with it — I have to put together my own damn cake. And you know what? Making an ice cream cake is mad fun! First, you are working with cold stuff and it’s so hot and that feels good. It also gives you an excuse to stick your head in a freezer a lot. Plus, when you’re done, you can decorate it however you see fit, and putting candy and syrup on things is one of life’s great joys. I suggest you decorate it with your own face so that you can have your friends over to eat it while it melts like the Wicked Witch of the East — so fun!

Now that it’s decided and we’re all making ice cream cakes — let’s get down to business.

First, you’re gonna need these non-delicious supplies:

9″ springform pan
Food processor
Plastic wrap
Large Ziploc freezer bag
Electric hand mixer

And these delicious supplies:

2 16-ounce boxes of Newman O’s (or equivalent Oreos, Tuxedos, Trader Joe’s O’s, what have you.)
2-ounces Earth Balance Coconut Spread (or butter works, but not AS delicious), melted.
2 cans full fat coconut milk, refrigerated overnight or put in the freezer for a few hours.
1 tbsp powdered cane sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
About 2 quarts ice cream of your choice — I used a quart of Almond Dream Vanilla mixed with three (okay, two and a half, I ate the other half) pints Coconut Bliss Salted Caramel & Chocolate (THAT STUFF IS GOOD.)
Anything you want to decorate it with! Chocolate syrup, gum drops, jelly beans, sprinkles, nuts, hell — GO NUTS.

Now, follow these tasty steps:

1. Remove ice cream from freezer. Let thaw for like 15-20 minutes until it’s soft-ish but not melted. While this is happening:

2. Make the crust by placing the Oreo or Oreo-like cookies into a food processor and blending into crumbs. Do this twice in batches of 10 cookies each.

Transfer the crumbs to a bowl and mix them in throughly with the Earth Balance Coconut Spread. Line the springform pan with plastic wrap and then press the cookie mixture into the bottom of your springform pan. Place in freezer.

3. In the Ziploc bag, place about 20 cookies and crush them with a rolling pin or whatever you like to crush things with so that you have everything from delicious sizable chunks to delicious crumbs. In a large bowl, place all the ice cream and then mix in cookie chunk-crumbs so it’s all a delicious swirl of delicious cookie ice cream.

4. Remove the cookie crust from the freezer and place the ice cream mixture in. Pat it down so it’s an even layer and then cover with plastic wrap again. Return to freezer for at least 4 hours.

5. Make the coconut whipped cream following this recipe OH DEAR LORD IT IS SO GOOD. I’ve posted the ingredients above for a double batch of the stuff — you might even want to triple it because you’ll probably eat some straight out of the bowl, too.

6. Remove cake, frost with whipped cream, and decorate how you see fit. I decorated it like my boyfriend’s face for his birthday last weekend — it’s the spitting image of his adorable mug:

Here’s the inside:

I know, right?!

Now make your own! It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, and the result was ten times tastier than I ever dreamed possible. Now, please excuse me while I go stick my face in it.

*Although the lovely Isa Chandra Moskowitz has conquered this very challenge already.