Can I use ice cream as frosting for my chocolate cake ?

I would just layer the cake with ice cream and leave it naked. If you could make your own ice cream, you could use the fresh soft serve to "frost" the cake, but that sounds like a frustrating disaster to me. I'd catch an uber to the store and buy some butter and powdered sugar.

Baskin Robbins has been frosting its ice cream cakes with ice cream for decades. It's not hard! Freeze the cake and layers together.

Take ice cream to be used for frosting out and mash it up with a hard spatula - don't let it melt much. You want to soften it while it's still mostly frozen. If it gets too melty, put the bowl back in the freezer. We never put a first crumb layer down, but you could if you want, especially if the cake itself is dark, like chocolate and the icing is light. If so, slick it over quickly with a bit of softened ice cream and return it to the freezer to get hard.

Use the icing as you would frosting, but be extra generous with it! Be sure to fill in the edges where the cake meets the layer of ice cream. Pop the cake and ice cream into the freezer if either ever seems too melty. (The store I worked in was always fairly cold when we worked on cakes so, working quickly, we never had a problem.) Let the cake freeze well once frosted to let the ice cream set up well. Take out about 10 minutes before cutting.

You can add regular frosting decoration to the fully frozen iced cake if you want - but be sure to have everything ready to go so you're working on a cold, very frozen cake. Put the cake back into the freezer if necessary while decorating to keep it from melting. It's not a bad idea to put your pastry bag full of decorating frosting in the fridge for a while before decorating. Hope this helps. ;o)

My first thought was to use melted ice cream as the base for the frosting and I found this by googling ( but have not tried it) /2013/8/16/recipe-for-magic-frosting-made-with-ice-cream.html

I wouldn't say it can't be done, but it will certainly produce messy results as the ice cream melts while the cake is being prepared for service, served and eaten. I would serve the slices is wide bowls rather than plates, and be sure to have spoons on hand for the melted ice cream.

It may be too late, but seems to me that using the ice cream as a "layer" between two cake layers will be more successful than as a frosting. If you try to frost the sides with softened ice cream I suspect it will slide down the sides, and if you defrost it fully to use as a frosting, it will be absorbed by the cake layers. I would soften it a little, then spread it horizontally between layers and on the top, then re-freeze. Otherwise use regular frosting as the topping and sides. That's how commercially-produced ice cream cakes are made.

Good luckLet us know how it works out.

Only if you plan on freezing the whole thing. People do love ice cream cake.

Only if you plan on freezing the whole thing. People do love ice cream cake.