Saturday, December 25, 2010

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Nathaniel
Okay, it isn't what you think. This is not a happy birthday Jesus cake. My husband Nathaniel was born on December 24th, several years ago. For years and years, his yearly birthday cake was the chocolate chip mint roll cake from Baskin-Robbins. Back in 2007, I begged him to let me make something better, but that pretty much failed. This year, he had already agreed to let me make his cake before learning that all three Baskin-Robbins in Greenville closed.

Triple Ice Cream Inside!
I wanted to still pay homage to the chocolate and mint combination, so I used a Mint-Chocolate Roulade recipe from Southern Living for the cake part. I've been obsessed with Charlotte Royale since considering it for the Daring Bakers challenge I hosted (I ended up picking cheesecake), and I often return to this beautiful Charlotte Royale on Axis of Aevil. I didn't even read their directions, just modeled what I was doing after their pictures. I froze the roulade to make it easiest to slice, then lined a random bowl with plastic wrap and then slices of the rolled cake.

Slice of birthday cake
Inside are three pints of ice cream. The one at the top is Haagen Daaz Mint Chocolate Chip. In the middle is Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar, and on the bottom is Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. True, I could have really been challenged by making my own ice cream for this, but I wanted it to be good, and I haven't really sorted out the texture in my homemade ice cream yet.

I thought this was terrific! At the end of the day it isn't that time consuming, particularly if you use store-bought ice cream like I did. If I made it again, the one thing I would change is the filling for the roulade. I made whipped cream and it turned pretty icy in the freezer.

After the fact, I realized this was almost exactly what the July Daring Bakers Challenge had been, even though I missed it. To show I was at least trying to do the recipes, here are my required blog-checking lines - The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

5 comments:

Stephanie said...

This cake is die die for! Ice cream and cake are the best combos. I have yet to make one on my own but you may have convinced me. Thanks for sharing.

Reshmy said...

Looks awesome. I am going to have to have to dig up this recipe from when you hosted it. I know a lot of people who will love this. But then, whats not to love in ice cream and cake?

CPNC said...

Ah, the zebra cake. I remember it fondly. Yours looks fantastic. What a lucky guy your husband is!

Eva said...

That looks awesome! And not all that difficult to do. I would go buttercream since that usually does OK in the freezer. Or ganache. mmmmm And a happy birthday to your husband cake is so much better than a happy birthday jesus cake IMHO :)

Jessica said...

What?! This is crazy awesome! I loooove ice cream so this looks like the best birthday cake to me!