Should an ice cream cake have cake in it? When I posed this question to the always-opinionated Bon Appétit staff, debate ensued.
“You need cake!” two editors insisted. Ice cream cakes with cake built in are tall and impressive. And practically speaking, cake provides necessary structure to meltage-prone ice cream. Without at least one layer of cake, they argued, an ice cream cake is nothing more than a cylinder of frozen dairy—a fine dessert in its own right, but not deserving of the title.
But have you ever cut into a frozen slab of cake? Associate director of creative development, social, and visuals Adam Moussa once broke a knife trying to do so. Associate editor Anikah Shaokat also noted that cake tends to dry out in the freezer, and nobody likes dry cake. Yet the core of the anti-cake argument rests on nostalgia. Senior cooking editor Emma Laperruque grew up celebrating her birthday with Ben & Jerry’s, where ice cream cake comes with two choose-your-own flavors, plus some crunchies for good measure. Others cited Dairy Queen’s ice cream cake—two layers of soft serve, striated by the brand’s signature fudge-and-crunch center—as a highlight of childhood parties.
In search of the truth, I dove into some Serious Journalistic Research: Where did the ice cream cake come from? And did the original version include cake? As it turns out, the modern ice cream cake descends from Renaissance-era trifles, built with layers of cream and biscuits. Early ice cream cakes were made by pressing frozen cream into molds, sometimes lined with ladyfinger-like sponge cakes called Savoy biscuits. So yes, some of them were made with cake. But increasingly elaborate bombes (like baked Alaska) and molded ice cream sculptures (a popular party centerpiece in the Victorian era) did not always contain a spongy layer.
Fast-forward to modern day and most popular brands skip the cake. In addition to Ben & Jerry’s and Dairy Queen, Friendly’s, Carvel, and Häagen-Dazs all fall in the just-ice-cream camp. This makes sense to me. How many of their shops are even outfitted with ovens? Aside from DQ, which installed ovens in its locations to toast quesadillas, my guess is few to none. But some brands do keep cake in the equation: Baskin-Robbins’ ice cream cakes come with one layer of chocolate or vanilla cake per tier, and Cold Stone Creamery includes your pick of devil’s food cake, yellow cake, or red velvet cake plus ice cream.
However, data alone would not settle this argument. We needed to make some ice cream cakes ourselves.
As a proud pro-cake team member, I pitched a recipe for my perfect ice cream cake: two layers of confetti cake, sandwiched with vanilla and strawberry ice cream, plus whipped cream and sprinkles on top. The cake layers would add structure and a towering, regal look, befitting a summer birthday or any special occasion.
My colleague, editorial assistant Nina Moskowitz (who “has nothing against cake,” she claims) pitched her own ideal ice cream cake, which leaned hard into nostalgia. Modeled after the Carvel cake of her childhood, Nina’s cookies and cream cake would feature layers of vanilla ice cream, a ripple of fudge, and lots of chocolate crunchies. But she’d tweak the formula a bit, balancing the sweetness of the ice cream with plenty of salt and espresso powder.
Stationed side by side in the test kitchen, Nina and I developed our recipes. I baked layer after layer of confetti cake, tweaking the oil and sugar to keep the cake moist. (Unlike butter-based cakes, oil-based cakes stay supple when refrigerated or frozen.) Nina baked batch after batch of chocolate crumbles, which she ended up using as a press-in cookie crust, a mix-in for the ice cream, and a dramatic, pebbly topper. The cookie crust performed the structural role that a cake layer otherwise might: It gave the ice cream a solid base to sit on, preventing the cake from melting and sliding on its platter.
By the end of the development process, the debate had been forgotten. Nina adored my strawberry-vanilla ice cream cake—in fact, the confetti cake layers were her favorite part. I couldn’t get enough of the salty fudge rippling through her cookies and cream ice cream cake, which I ate for breakfast multiple days in a row. And the staff loved them so much that nobody could declare a winner. I guess you’ll just have to make both and decide for yourself.
This showstopper has confetti cake layers, vanilla and strawberry ice cream, and rainbow sprinkles. Let’s party.
Vanilla ice cream, espresso-spiked fudge, and lots (and lots) of chocolate cookie crunchies.