Choc Chip, Honeycomb, Cookie Crumble Ice Cream Cake

A week or so ago I asked the handsome Husband what kind of cake he would like for his birthday.

"Icecream" was the reply.
"Home made or store bought?" I enquired. (We have a bit of romantic birthday history involving the store bought kind!)
"Home made" he said.

Well ok then! I thought of various concoctions involving his favourite things - hazelnuts, coffee and chocolate.

But eventually I went back to the best looking ice cream cake I've ever seen.

In Nigella Express she makes one that has always tempted me with it's sheer decadence so I pulled up the recipe on Nigella.com and made an ingredients list on a post-it at work. I love that Nigella is so relaxed about sharing her recipes online! It's brilliant that you can remember a recipe from one of her shows and immediately hunt down the recipe and pick up the ingredients on the way home.

My post-it said:

Good vanilla ice-cream (I used Streets Blue Ribbon)
Bourbon Biscuits crunched up (which became malt ones when I figured out that you can't seem to get Bourbon biscuits in Oz)
Choc Chips (in place of her peanut butter swirls)
a Crunchie smashed
2 flakes (my addition for decorative purposes)
Dark chocolate & Cream (for a chocolate fudge sauce)

Basically you let the ice cream soften, put 1.5L in the mixer and mix in 3/4 packet biscuits, 3/4 packet choc chips and the crunchie. Pour the mix into a springform tin lined with cling, flatten down, fold the cling back over and freeze overnight.

Decorate with crumbled flake and sit out for 5mins or so before serving.

I melted together the dark chocolate and cream for a rich fudge sauce - be careful to do this on a low heat - cream burns and changes flavour very easily.

I almost had a disaster! The original recipe also includes sugared or honey roasted peanuts. I bought the only packet Woolworths had and was about to pop them in with the ice cream when I had a quick sample. Lucky I did! turns out they were "Savoury Honey Roasted" and the ingredients included onion and garlic powder! That would've been a fine birthday story!

We invited friends over, bought ingredients for a big roast dinner (2 kinds of meat!) and then 3hrs before they were due to arrive poor old husband fell victim to a nasty sinus bug. He was Codralled up and sent to bed - party cancelled. 2 days later I took pity on the poor thing and lit up the cake just for us. We celebrated with a Farscape marathon in our PJs rather than the planned dinner with friends but the cake was still just as delicious.

Once all is well we'll be hunting down visitors to demolish the fridge full of baked dinner accoutrements - and the rest of the cake!

Have a nice day everyone! x