How to Make No-Bake Ice Cream Cake

Welcome to the first official episode of Cooking with Kristen!! My good friends know that I joke around and Snapchat/text pictures of myself cooking to them and call it “Cooking with Kristen”… well now it’s a real thing!!

I like cooking (because I like eating more) but let’s be real, desserts are my true passion. Ice cream is my favorite food, I have no shame! My parents needed to bring a dessert to a party thing they were going to, and I happily volunteered to help!

I decided to make a DIY ice cream cake! I’ve seen some food videos of people making these and thought “I could do that”! I didn’t use a recipe to do this, I kind of just made it up. It’s super easy and so delicious, and one of my new favorite things to make.

To make this, you basically just need some ice cream, a pie shell, and a few of your favorite ice cream toppings.

I made two of these pies/cakes so my parents could take one and we could have one at home. I used one graham cracker and one Oreo pie shell.

You can switch out any of these ingredients for other things or other flavors. Do whatever you like best! I think this would also be great using Oreos and mint ice cream, or with chocolate ice cream and strawberries, or with cookie dough or peanut butter ice cream. You really can’t go wrong!

That being said, I’m going to create the recipe using what I picked!

(This is for 2 cakes, use 1 banana & 1 pie crust for one!)

• Chocolate syrup
• 2 bananas
• Oreos (I used minis, but it doesn’t matter what size)
• Graham crackers
• Vanilla ice cream
• Whipped cream
• 1 oreo pie crust
• 1 graham cracker pie crust

1. First, get all your ingredients out. Take out the ice cream to let it thaw. It needs to be soft for the next step! Put your whipped cream in the fridge, not the freezer. It’ll also need to be soft, but you won’t need it until later.
2. Slice your bananas! When the cake/pie is all done and frozen, the bananas get the hardest out of anything else, so you may want to cut them up even smaller than slices. Smaller pieces will make it easier to cut and eat later.

3. Open your pie crust. Once your ice cream is nice and melty, scoop about 7-8 scoops into your pie crust. You want to fill the pie shell about halfway, so you’ll have room for toppings and whipped cream!
   

4. Spread the ice cream with a spoon or spatula so it creates a smooth base for the rest of your cake.
   

5. Next, bananas! Spread the pieces of banana evenly on top of your ice cream. Put as much or as little as you’d like!
   

6. Place some graham crackers in a plastic bag. To top my two cakes, I used about 4 sheets of the crackers, or about half a sleeve, for each of the 2 layers. If you’re making one cake, I’d say about 2 crackers is enough for each layer!
   

7. Smash them! The crackers should be soft enough to crush with your fingers. I crushed mine until all the pieces were small enough to eat. Don’t make it all total dust, but make sure there aren’t any big jagged pieces!
8. Repeat 6 & 7 with your oreo cookies. You just need enough of the crumblies to cover your cake!
9. Once you have your crushed graham crackers and oreos, sprinkle them evenly on top of the bananas. Does it look good or what?!
   
10. I learned this the hard way, so now you don’t have to make the same mistake ;). Next, you want to pop the lid back on and freeze the cake for an hour or 2 to let the ice cream harden again before adding the next layer.
11. After you’ve waited patiently for it to freeze (it doesn’t have to be solid, you just don’t want it liquidy), take it back out, take off the lid, and scoop some whipped cream on top of the cookie crumbs. I used a spatula to spread it evenly. The cookie pieces will probably get all stuck in the whipped cream, but that’s okay! It’s all going together anyway.
    

12. Once your whipped cream is smooth, repeat steps 6-8 to create another cookie layer. Then, use your best artistic skills to drizzle some chocolate syrup on top.
13. Freeze until you’re ready to eat, and voila! Slice like a pie & enjoy 🙂

There is no way you can mess up this recipe, and there’s no way you won’t love it unless you’ve got a vendetta against ice cream and cookies. Seriously, this cake it so good. I might go finish mine now.

Let me know if you decide to try out this recipe, I’d love to hear what ingredients you used and how it turned out!!