I don’t cook, but I do bake. I like to make cookies and brownies, though I’ve never ventured into the cake territory (except for boxed, but I don’t really think that counts). A co-worker made this lovely ice cream cake for another’s birthday a few weeks ago and I was sold. She shared the recipe with me, and the great thing about this cake is that is can be made completely unique for every birthday!

This was hers (pardon the phone photo)

And this was mine.

Brian picked out his cookie base and topping and his flavors. He chose lady finger vanilla and creme cookies, and triple chocolate peanut butter sundae ice cream, and french vanilla of course. It was so easy though it did need a food processor, but you could probably get by without one and just crush some cookies in a bag “manually”.

I’m no expert at spreading things, so I made the whipped cream flat, and layered some more crushed cookie on top. So it didn’t look as fancy as the recipe photos, but it tasted great. I have orders for the next birthday already!

So was it cheaper than just buying one from the store? Here’s the break down:

I did my cake in a 10-1/2 inch spring form instead of 9 inch like the recipe calls for, so I needed more ice cream. I have a little french vanilla left over, but I used 3 full pints of the chocolate peanut butter (ice cream usually comes in quarts, so I bought 1-1/2 quarts of two flavors of ice cream)

• Ice cream was 2 for $6 on sale – $6
• $4.50 ice cream sandwiches (there were 12 in the box, and I used about 8-1/2)
• $2.50 cookies (this is a guesstimate, they were on sale also)
• $1.25 cool whip (on sale for 4 for $5… we didn’t buy 4 though..)

Our total was $14.25, cheaper than the typical $20 ice cream cake. Win!