My First Ice Cream Cake

One of my summer experiments as a child included learning to bake and assemble an ice cream cake. Bombay's summer heat, even in the 1980s was oppressive enough, that I was always experimenting with ''cooling'' recipes!

My maternal Uncle, Bunny Mama, as we fondly called him, would indulge me with my kitchen experiments. This included buying sponge cakes from the local Hersch's bakery and liters of vanilla ice-cream.

I would slice the sponge cake and shlep on scoops of ice-cream, expecting them to stick together. Unfortunately, that would not happen, instead the ice-cream would melt and the sponge would soak it all up. These would then become vanilla, milk sponge cakes! As my Mum would later tell me, these were nothing but chemistry experiments that the ten year old me was conducting.

Pre-internet and pre-chat gpt era, I had to rely on recipe books and seek out professionals to get first hand information as to how to really bake and assemble an ice-cream cake.

After two months, and possibly ten failed attempts, I finally figured it out. First I baked the sponge myself and used a recipe with very little oil or butter. Then the most important step was to wrap the cake in butter paper and stick it in the freezer for about 24 hours.

Then would come the interesting and tricky part (specially for a ten year old).

Remove the cake from the freezer, use a long serrated knife and slice it very carefully in half. Place the base on one plate and with very quick, deft strokes layer it with ice-cream, all the while ensuring that it did not melt. Quickly place the other layer as on top and repeat the process. Quickly grate some chocolate on top and voila, the ice-cream cake was now ready!