Community Corner
Ashby's Owner Talks About Tricks to Making a Superb Ice Cream Cake
A super-cold freezer, steel spatula and a dash of creativity will allow you to make your own creamy concoction.
Who doesn’t like ice cream? This time of year it’s all some of us think about. Ice cream is an amazing food–cold, refreshing, smooth and flavorful. Why not make a cake out of it?
We checked in with Sally Ristovski, owner of shop on Mack Avenue in Grosse Pointe Woods to see how she gets her ice cream cakes so beautiful. If you haven’t seen one, you must stop by to take a glance. Aside from the amazing decorations, the ice cream frosting is smoother than a Las Vegas blackjack dealer.
“The frosting isn’t the hardest part,” Ristovski said. “It’s the ice cream layer inside.”
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OK, let’s back up a bit. The Ashby’s ice cream cake has a layer of cake on the bottom, a layer of specialty ice cream on top of that, and it is all covered in a vanilla or chocolate ice cream frosting. To make one of these creations at home, you need to know the secret.
“Take the half gallon of ice cream and cut through the carton,” she explained, motioning horizontally. “This way you will get your perfect square, rectangle or circle. Then you cut the cake to fit that shape. Put the cake on a board, add the ice cream layer and place it in the freezer.”
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Once done with this step, you must leave the cake in the freezer for several hours, until it is frozen solid. Then comes the frosting! Allow your vanilla (for instance) ice cream to melt enough so that you can begin to whip it with a steel – not a rubber – spatula.
“Let it melt a little to start working on it, but don’t let it melt too much,” Ristovski warned. “It still needs to be a little thick. Then you can start frosting the cake with the spatula.”
Each time you finish spreading some of the fast-melting ice cream, dip the spatula into warm water. This will allow it to spread easily and to get that smooth finish. Warning: you must work quickly before the ice cream frosting begins to slide off the cake. If this happens, place everything back in the freezer and resume after it has chilled enough.
The next step is to let it freeze overnight before decorating. Ristovski said that you should leave the cake out five to six minutes before serving, to let the ice cream soften enough to cut. If you’re enjoying one of her cakes, however, you can wait 30 minutes because of her super cold freezer–about 15 degrees below zero.
