Nicholas’s birthday cake. As you can see it was a little harder to get the ice cream smooth on the sides because it was melting so fast. Even with that little imperfection, it was delicious!!

My oldest son Nicholas’s 12th birthday was a few days ago. He is finally old enough to sit in the front seat of the car and we are allowing him to finally play teen rated video games. Provided that my husband has researched said video game and deems it appropriate for our oldest, almost teenage son to play. Onto the cake for his special day. I decided that I wanted to make him an ice cream cake with brownies instead of cake. Enter the BAKED brownie found in BAKED New Frontiers in Baking on page 117. This recipe is the reason why I purchased the cook book about a year ago. These brownies are by far the best that I have ever had. Before this recipe, I stopped making homemade brownies because I couldn’t find one that tasted remotely close to a dense, rich, chocolate brownie worth eating. Enter this delicious thick, fudgy, chocolate, sinful creation. I have made these many times already which is why I decided to turn them into a birthday cake. All I had to do was add chopped peanut butter cups, vanilla ice cream and vanilla buttercream frosting and a birthday cake was made. The coolest thing that I learned while making this cake was making a frosting out of ice cream. If you put ice cream in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat it for about a minute it spreads just like frosting. You have to work fast to cover your cake because it is ice cream that has been warmed slightly by the mixer so it melts fast. The cake itself looked pretty cool, but it was a lot harder to cut than I thought. I let the cake sit on the counter for about 15 minutes to warm it up, but that wasn’t enough. I had to microwave it for a minute so the knife could go through it to cut a piece. Oh well, lessons learned I guess. Overall, the cake was a success and was very tasty!!
The picture of the brownie before it was make into a cake didn’t turn out. As soon as I make another batch I will get a better picture and post it so you can see how yummy it looks.