Would you like a piece of cake right now? For Goodness Cake is here for you.
Today: Cold ice cream plus warm cake equals a bowl of soggy mush. Here's a better way to eat ice cream and cake without compromising the integrity of either.
If it seems like a good idea to encourage your two best friends to start dating, you haven’t spent enough time watching sitcoms and soap operas. Because if we can trust television, odds are that your two friends’ personalities will morph into one very boring version and you’ll be left prying open your eyelids as one person gushes to you about the other.
You’ll only be able to tolerate so much.
The same thing is true for the union of ice cream and cake. It seems like a good idea—a cold scoop of ice cream atop a warm piece of cake—but the reality is that in this mingling, both components are compromised: The ice cream coalesces into the cake, both succumb to mush, and all individuality is lost. What was once two distinctly valuable desserts becomes a mess of sweet, soggy drippiness.
You’ll only be able to tolerate so much.
With this ice cream cake, however, both parts—the ice cream (roasted banana) and the cake (chocolate-date)—maintain their identities. Because the cake is frozen completely before a layer of just-churned ice cream is spread on top and the whole pan is sent back into the freezer, you'll get two discrete layers. It's a process that involves a tolerance for delayed gratification you probably never knew you had.
But in the end it means that the cake is complemented, rather than overpowered, by the ice cream—and vice versa. The fudgy, truffle-like texture of the cake stands up to the ice cream but becomes a bit softer; the richness from the dates and the chocolate is more pronounced with the barely-bitter banana flavor as a foil. Rather than icecreamcake, you get ice cream-cake—joint yet separate.
It's as if your dating friends have refused a couple name. They are not Bennifer or Brangelina or Kimye or Icecreamcake. And maybe you'll decide it's okay for them to date after all.
Chocolate-Date Cake Topped with Roasted Banana Ice Cream
Makes one 9- by 13-inch pan of ice cream cake; serves so many
Cake adapted from Mast Brothers Chocolate: A Family Cookbook; ice cream from Max Falkowitz at Serious Eats
For the cake:
2 cups water
2 teaspoons baking soda
14 ounces dates (I used Medjool)
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
14 ounces dark chocolate, chopped (do not use chocolate chips, even if it's tempting)
For the ice cream:
3 ripe bananas, sliced into 1/2-inch coins
3/4 cup raw sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
2 cups cream
1 cup milk
For the chocolate drizzle:
3 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
50 grams coconut oil
See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.
Photos by Mark Weinberg
Written by: Sarah Jampel
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9 Comments
When I worked in an ice cream store as a teenager - where I made at least a couple hundred ice cream cakes -- the cakes were always cooled outside the pan, and then frozen (back in the pan, tightly wrapped with plastic wrap). The ensured a very smooth edge courtesy of the freezing process. After the cake in the pan was frozen solid, we then layered the ice cream on it while the ice cream was still very hard, packing it tightly, and then pulled up and over the edges of plastic wrap. We covered the top, and then froze it all hard. This gave the cake edges a nice smooth finish - very helpful if you want to "frost" the whole thing with barely-softened ice cream (after which of course you put it directly back into the freezer).
Yours looks amazing! ;o)
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