Happy Birthday!

Every Christmas Eve, we celebrate a birthday. Not Jesus! Nathaniel! His old standard used to be the mint chocolate chip roulade cake from Baskin Robbins, but as there aren't any left around these parts, and he is married to someone who likes to bake, I have done some experimenting the last few years.

This year he asked if I could also make the ice cream part. Usually I wimp out and buy good ice cream from the store - Ben & Jerry's, Haagen Daaz, whatever I know is good. After all, I've not had the best luck in ice cream making. Too icey, too eggy, too solid, not enough flavor, and so on. I was thinking back to the one time I was happy with what I made - the hazelnut gelato from the Ciao Bella book. I decided to make two kinds of gelato, and stack this cake high. One is the typical mint chocolate chip, and one is the reverse of that.

I started with the plain base and the chocolate base in the Ciao Bella book. After they had chilled, I stirred in 1 tbsp creme de menthe and 1/2 tsp peppermint extract into each (this sounds like a lot, and was a lot more than the recipe called for, but honestly I wouldn't have wanted any less!). When the ice cream maker started sounding like it was working hard, I dumped in whichever bits I was adding (chopped semisweet chocolate or mint chips). Then I put the mixtures into the same cake pans I'd baked the cakes in, to make it easy to put together.

This was delicious! It looks a bit unfinished, because I didn't ice it at all, but taste-wise it didn't need it. I used the Black Magic Cake recipe I found randomly online, and it was great.