Dad's Homemade Birthday Ice Cream Cake

In honor of my Dad's birthday I decided to regale his carnivorous tummy with a vegan ice cream cake, inspired by and courtesy of The Discerning Brute's recipe. You guys on the west coast have Maggie Mudd, but I've yet to convince the incomparable Lula's to move into the cake business (I admit they don't have to since they do what they already do so damn well). So, it was a do-it-yourself job that could have gone either way (like most of my cooking).

Anyhoo, the DB assured me that I did not need a spring-form cake pan to make an ice cream cake at home, just some waxed paper. So, I lined my pound cake loaf pan and went to town with my layers:

#1, the bottom crust: crumbled vegan thin mints mixed with Holy Kakow which, by the way, is the best chocolate sauce ever. They should really reconsider calling it "syrup" because it is so much more than that; I don't even like chocolate syrup! And, besides being TBCSE, I took the liberty of comparing the ingredients to those in my Dad's non-vegan standby: U-bet syrup. Holy Kakow's list was- of course- organic and completely impressive, while U-bet's ingredients actually made me shudder. Tossed! Sorry, Dad; I know it was your birthday. Instead, enjoy the better sauce with a half naked man on the front!

#2, first layer of ice cream: Dark Chocolate Luna & Larry's Coconut Bliss ice cream (pure chocolatey, coconutty goodness)

#3, center topping layer: crumbled Vienna fingers (I know, but it's the Dad's favorite cookie and it is vegan by default. I will note, though, that the Magic Bullet completely pulverized the Vienna fingers so they didn't make an impressive filling and will thusly not be re-used for this purpose.)

#4, top-most ice cream layer: Naked Coconut Luna & Larry's Coconut Bliss ice cream (coconutty and the creamiest CB flavor yet...& that's saying A LOT of creaminess)

#5, pizazz: ye old standby...rainbow sprinkles

I have to say that I was utterly impressed by how easy it was to make this cake and how much "fancy" credit you get for creating an ice cream cake (and serving it drizzled with more Holy Kakow). I wasn't prepared for the adoration! Ok, the adoration was from the vegetarian Mom, but carnie Dad did eat it.

I just want to share one suggestion about the cake assemblage: be sure to "sprinkle" your dry topping layers so that the ice cream layers can merge at various points in between. Otherwise, too much tightly packed dry topping will cause your layers to involuntarily and, quite spontaneously, disassemble! Also note that the waxed paper very easily peels away from the cake, so you may want to go crazy and even try an ice cream layer as your bottom so that all of your toppings are neatly sandwiched (my bottom layer was a little crumble-a-fied). All in all, you really can't mess up this recipe. Enjoy.