Monday, Monday, Monday and Strawberry Ice Cream Cake

Happy Monday Folks!!!

I hope this message finds you satisfied with last night's series finale of LOST.  I was...especially since I've been right for six stinking years!!  I just knew it was Purgatory but I have to say, I'm really glad my allergies were acting up yesterday and my eyes were already watering because when Sawyer and Juliet reunited....ahhhh, worth six years of watching!! 

We have a new addition to the house....Nelly, he's Court's cat and he is a pistol.  :0)  Young and curious and this is apparently one of the crazy things he's been caught doing.

That would be the dogs bowl he is drinking from.

Onto more yummy items of interest....Mere's birthday cake.

Bear with me on this one, as it's a mesh of recipes I combined to get the final product of this!

Cast of characters:

1 box SuperMoist white cake mix

3/4 cup water

3 egg whites

1 container (6 oz) strawberry yogart

1/3 cup vegetable oil

Ok...get that oven going at 350 degrees and then let's get those cake pans floured and greased.

If you notice, I like to cut a round of parchment paper for the bottom of the pan and grease and flour it too.  It just makes sure all that yummy cake goodness comes out of the pan.

Now in a large bowl, beat the cake mix, water, oil, egg whites and yogart with mixer on low for about 30 seconds then on medium for 2 minutes.  Batter will be a little lumpy and then pour into your prepared pans.

Bake those in the oven for 25-30 minutes (for 9 inch round) or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Cool 10 minutes in pan.  Then remove to wire racks and cool completely!!!

While these babies are cooling I had an epiphany about how to get the ice cream in between the layers.  You see I had been contemplating this all morning....it actually was creeping in my thoughts while I was doing my bible study too....tsk tsk, sorry God I'll try to work out my recipe details a different time from now on.

Anyway, this is what I came up with.  Get some good yummy red strawberries and cut them up, like so:

Then if your mama has blessed you with a wonderful Kitchen Aid mixer grab the vanilla ice cream and the hook attachment and slap the ice cream and the strawberries in the mixing bowl and blend away.

Now I just grabbed one of those cake pans (nope, I didn't rinse it and I even reused the parchment paper again and then I poured the ice cream mixture into the pan and popped that baby back in the freezer.

It's time to work on the icing so this is what you are gonna need!

I used two cans of whipped vanilla frosting, half a jar of marshmallow cream and about 1 tsp each of vanilla and strawberry extract.  Blend those all up in the mixing bowl with the mixer and we're ready to frost this baby!

Place one of your layers on the plate and then level it off.  Carefully pop that round of ice cream out of the pan and place on top of cake layer then add the second cake layer on top of the ice cream.  Now let's slather that frosting all around the cake:

I should have let that ice cream stay in the freezer a little longer, you can see that it was starting to melt pretty quick.  I think another 10 or 15 minutes in the freezer would have prevented that but I can frost pretty fast when I need to!!!

Now that it is all frosted it was time for the sprinkles.  Court and I picked out turquoise and black because that's how the Merebear rolls.  Then I topped it off with two whole strawberries...just so there is no confusion over what flavor the cake is.

now, I'll give you a peek at what everything looked like, even a slice of cake.

As you can tell, it was a tad difficult to cut but pretty successful for my very first version of an ice cream cake.   Happy Monday everyone and don't forget it is Jack Bauer's final fling tonight!

Peace, Love and Yummies