Yummy Homemade Ice Cream Cake

I posted it a while back, but since it's summer and I just made one for B's b-day party and it's delicious and I can't stop eating the leftovers I figured it was worth reposting...

I made this cake for Ian's 3rd birthday. 

I got most of the decorating ideas on Coolest Homemade Cakes.  And I submitted it to the site after Ian's party. 

Go check it out they have some really amazing ideas!

You can find my cake here.  Here's how I made it.  Let me know if you have any questions. 

First, I baked a  dark chocolate cake in a Wilton 12" x 18" cake pan (roughly 32 mins @ 325) After it cooled, I put it in the freezer, while my ice cream softened in the fridge, for 30 minutes. I then spread two half gallon cartons of vanilla ice cream on top of the cake and put it back in the freezer to harden. In the meantime, I mixed together a large contatiner of whipped cream, 2 boxes of chocolate pudding, hot fudge topping and crushed up oreo cookies. I had found the recipe here but changed the proportions a bit.

I then iced the cake with whipped cream and let it harden. I used crushed up vanilla wafers for the sand, with a few chocolate teddy grahams thrown in to give it some color variation and make it look like real sand.

I printed a giant "3", cut it out and used it as a stencil for the number on the cake and a strip of cardstock as a stencil for the road. Once the cake was covered with its sand-like coating, I removed the stencils and used crushed oreos to fill in the road and the number "3". I dyed grated coconut green by tossing it in a ziploc bag with green food coloring and filled in the blank corner.

I then printed signs on cardstock off the computer and used Ian's toy cars to decorate. He loved it and I had a great time doing it. The frozen coconut was a surprise hit with the kids. They loved it.♥