One of my sons requested this coronavirus ice cream cake for his birthday this year. It was easy to make, and I’ll show you how!
This cake isn’t terribly time consuming, but it does require a bit of pre-planning. First thing to make is the royal icing “crowns.” I chose to make them with royal icing, because I always seem to have some one hand. But fondant, candy melts could also work…really anything that will dry firm and hold a shape.
Make the royal icing triangle crowns by piping onto parchment and allowing to dry overnight to get a firm structure. I pulled up the famous picture of the image, cropped and duplicated the crowns into a document, and printed out a page. This was slipped underneath the parchment paper, and served as a great guideline to get uniform shapes. Quick black lines piped under the red created depth.
Create depth by piping a “stem” to be attached to the bottom of each triangle. Allow the royal icing to dry overnight.
Once dry, flip over the triangles and affix a stem to each one with more royal icing. Don’t worry about the fact that the bottom of the stem is a bit pointy. This will actually work in your favor when you go to affix it to the cake. I use this strategy when making royal icing “mushrooms” for my yule logs. 🙂
Apologies, the next phase of the cake was poorly documented!
I baked a thin, white layer of cake in a large round cake pan lined with parchment. Once baked and cooled, I cut a wedge out of the cake (kinda like this), and squeezed the thin cake into the inside of a round bowl. Start with a smaller wedge and cut out more if needed. Leave the parchment on the cake in order to make it easier to remove. Once the bowl is lined with cake, fill it with ice cream and allow it to set in the freezer for at least an hour or two.
The results should look like this: a dome of cake with a dome of ice cream inside. When you’re ready to assemble, flip out the cake from the bowl, and peel off the parchment paper.
Make some chocolate ganache by pouring 1/2 cup of warm whipping cream over 6 oz of chocolate chips.
Keep pouring until the cake is fully covered. The round shape makes it easy to get an even layer, thankfully!
Allow the ganache to set for a minute or two, and then transfer to a cardboard cake round with a spatula.
Make the next layer with a 4.2 oz box of Oreo instant pudding, 1 cup of cold milk, and 8 oz of whipped topping. I chose Oreo because of the black cookie flecks. Cover the cake in the topping.
Use a skewer to carve away some of the topping in order to reveal the dark, ganache underbelly.
Now the fun part: add the “crowns” to the cake! If using royal icing, be gentle with them as they could break easily if you push them too hard. Continue until the cake is covered in red triangles.
Optional finish to the cake is to add some orange and white dots with royal icing. I can be a bit of a pain to mix and bottle icing for such a small detail, but the details are often the best part!
The finished product!
Cut the cake to reveal the different layers. For the observant folks out there, I made multiple cakes, one for each household involved in the party (because…coronavirus). So this ice cream core is a different flavor than the previous pics.
I hope you found this helpful. Stay safe, and stay healthy folks.
