Chocolate and Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cake

Zelda Wingcrest & Triforce Ice Cream Cake

Today my son turns 10 years old. We're officially into double digits now. Mind blowing.

This past weekend, we threw him a small party based around gaming, Nintendo, and Zelda. It was the simplest party we have ever thrown. We only invited four of his friends for dinner, followed by video games and then a sleepover for those who were allowed. Two of his friends slept over.

With a party this simple, I decided to spend more time on the menu and food. I also took the opportunity to do a few new things. I made push cake pops for the first time and I created a Zelda themed frozen ice cream cake. Because it was frozen, I started creating the layers a week before. The entire ice cream cake, minus the candies inside, were homemade. I made two different flavors of ice cream for the inside. I made the chocolate cake and chocolate fudge and ganache and molding chocolate decoration. Stuff I didn't make from scratch included the Halloween chocolate bars, Hershey's chocolate sauce and Trader Joe's oreo cookies. This cake was loaded with 6 layers of gooey, melty, crunchy awesomeness. 7 layers if you count the decoration on top.

Here were the layers from top to bottom:

1. Peanut butter/white chocolate molding chocolate
2. Lindt chocolate ganache
3. Chocolate ice cream, using cocoa/Lindt chocolate
4. Crushed oreos, minus half of the oreo white filling (so it wouldn't be so sweet!) + chocolate fudge
5. Peanut butter banana chocolate ice cream
6. Chopped up Halloween candies (100 Grand, Snickers, Reese's peanut butter cups) + Hershey's chocolate sauce
7. Chocolate cake

6 layers of peanut butter, chocolate, caramel, candy, peanuts, cake and ice cream awesomeness.

I wanted to make a cake that was specially designed for my son. I featured some of his favorite chocolate bars inside and added layers of cake and ice cream flavors to compliment those candy flavors. He loves caramel, chocolate, and peanut butter. I also wanted to bring in some kind of fruit so I decided on bananas since they went well with everything I was working with. I made up a peanut butter banana chocolate flavored ice cream using frozen bananas and chocolate peanut butter protein powder. I knew the chocolate bars would be sweet so I reduced the sugar even further on my ice creams. Overall, the cake was not overly sweet and the combinations of flavors was a winner. It was the perfect birthday treat for my 10 year old monkey! Lol.

Themed ice creams are hard to achieve without the use of fondant and simple designs using whipping cream. I went with a simple ganache coating and topped it with nice chocolate pieces. I made my peanut butter and white chocolate molding chocolate in advance and stored it in the fridge. I messed up a few times initially because I added too much corn syrup and over mixed it. The trick is really not to over mix it and to be patient. As the chocolate cools down, it hardens to the point where you can knead and shape it. My goodness, the molding chocolates were so delicious! Reese's peanut butter chips and Trader Joe's white chocolate chips were the perfect gold color I wanted to achieve too! Before laying the pieces onto the cake, I painted them gold using my airbrush gold sheen food coloring. They were so pretty:)

I'm happy with how the cake turned out. It was my first themed ice cream cake and the first one to feature ice creams that were all homemade. The ganache was a bit messy on top because I took too long levelling it off and the longer it was on the cake the more it froze. I knew that would happen but it didn't help to rush. The perfectionist in me kept messing with it and that was a mistake. Ha! But I'm so proud of my Zelda wingcrest and triforce molding chocolate on top :) It looked perfect.

I made other desserts too. People know me by now and I can't stop at just an ice cream cake for a birthday party. Lol. I tried to go with Zelda and Link themed stuff as much as possible. Not the easiest theme but oh well.

Mini Triforce vanilla cupcakes with chocolate swiss meringue buttercreams.

Link push pops, Link sugar cookies, and master sword sugar cookies.

10 year old as the mighty Link from Zelda