Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cake Glory

Out of all the different kinds of cakes that I do, ice cream cakes are by far the easiest. You don't have to worry that the frosting doesn't get on perfectly, or that the cakes don't bake evenly or any of the other things that stress me out about baking; because everyhting is covered in ice cream!! And if you're making the cake with store bought ice cream-it's just easy.

I however, make my ice cream cakes with home made ice cream. In this case, my favorite peanut butter frozen custard:

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 6 large eggs
• 2 cups milk
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• 3 cups heavy cream
• 4 teaspoons vanilla

In a medium mixing bowl, beat the sugar and eggs until tickened and pale yellow. Set aside.

Bring the milk to a simmer in a heavy saucepan. Slowly beat the hot milk into the egg/sugar mixture. Pour the everything back into the pan and place over low heat. Stir with a whisk or wooden spoon until it thickens. Make sure it doesn't boil or the eggs will scramble!

Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter then let cool. At this point you're supposed to strain the custard...I'm lazy so I never do that and it's never been a problem. When custard is a little cooler, stir in cream and vanilla.

To help the ice cream freeze faster, I usually make the custard the day before so cover the custard with plastic wrap (let the plastic wrap sit right on the custard) and refrigorate. This is a double batch so it will have to go through your ice cream maker in two batches.

For the cake I used what has become my staple chocolate cake recipe...but because the recipe is so huge I quartered it. Math and I have never been friends and fractions have always been a pain...so quartering this was a pain. And also...how do you judge .286 cups of anything? I did a lot of eye-balling. The batter I poured into 2 8 inch round pans instead of one so I didn't have to try to slice the cake in half.

The key, I've found, to an ice cream cake is a spring form pan. An 8 inch cake in a 9 inch spring form leaves plenty of room for ice cream. And of course you can't just have cake in the middle!!

So what you end of with is two layers of cake with hot fudge and Oreo cookie crumbles between and on top.

After I put on the second layer of cake, hot fude, and cookie crumbs I let it sit in the freezer for about 30 minutes just to harden up the fudge. The ice cream needs to be soft and fairly lump free before going on the cake but make sure to not let it melt completely.

When the ice craem and cake are ready, put the spring form back together, pour in the ice cream making sure that it gets around the sides of the cake, and smooth the top.

I wanted to do a little decorating of course so I broke up some Peanut Butter Cups and covered the top of the cake with those and a sprinkle of the Oreo crumbs. Let the cake do some freezing. I'd say at least a couple hours if not overnight. When I make these it's usually a three day process. But when it's time to take off the spring form ring...it looks great and tastes fantabulous.