Doing something to celebrate your significant other’s birthday is a bit like taking your car to the carwash. The basic bronze package (e.g., birthday dinner and maybe dessert) is what you opt for most of time, while you “level-up” once in a while and get them the silver package (e.g., everything from the bronze package plus a gift and/or planning a get-together with their friends, etc.). But on “milestone” birthdays, you splurge and treat your car (or boyfriend) to the platinum package, which is includes all of the above in addition to a surprise party and an exterior carnauba wax and polish.
In planning the birthday basketball tournament, I had to spin an intricate web of lies and to keep KJ from getting suspicious since I wanted it to be a surprise. However, this meant pretending he was just getting the bronze package to deflect any suspicions while actually procuring the platinum in secrecy.
In the middle of the week, he gave me the Puss in Boots eyes and told me that the ONE thing he wanted for his birthday this year was a half-batch of the peanut butter cookies I had made a few weeks ago for a coworker’s birthday. Obviously, I couldn’t A) say no to those eyes and B) tell him I was too busy making a surprise birthday cake and planning a surprise party. So, on his actual birthday, I frantically cranked a full batch out in between work and servicing a bronze package a la dinner at Rustic Canyon to sample the “Best Gourmet Burger in LA”. I put chocolate chips in the other half-batch for him to bring to his fantasy football draft, where the birthday cake would also be served.
Since he loves ice cream cake, I decided to try my hand at making the frozen treat. I didn’t want to make any ordinary ice cream cake that one could buy from Baskin Robbins (i.e., Mint Chip Ice Cream with Chocolate Cake, etc.). So, I thought I would take advantage of it being peach season and whip up a peaches and cream ice cream cake.
I made it upside down and in a 9” springform pan so I wouldn’t have to worry about prying the frozen concoction out of a normal pan. The first layer was vanilla bean ice cream with chopped fresh peaches mixed in, and the middle layer was peach sorbet.
The final layer was a white cake. The recipe I had made enough to fill a 13”x9” pan at about two inches thick. I anticipated needing to cut it down to be 9″ round, and then cut it shorter to about an inch or so. However, the cake ended up being a little on the dryer side when it came out of the oven, so it crumbled when I tried to put it on top of the sorbet layer. It didn’t taste dry, but it just wasn’t moist enough to stay together.
Since it was already late on a work night and I couldn’t pick out all of the pieces from the softened sorbet, I instead ended up piecing everything together and pushing it down in hopes that it wouldn’t fall apart once it came out of the fridge. Thankfully, it ended up working out because if the cake had actually been very moist, it would have gotten soggy and icy once frozen. I wish the peach sorbet had been a bit brighter in color so that the layers would really pop when looking at the cake as a whole.
I picked up a cake box and the gold cake round at a specialty cooking store in Culver City, along with a couple of smaller baker’s boxes for the PB cookies and maybe a future project. Despite the sorbet layer being a bit light in color, I did really like the way the cake looked when sliced.
Here’s the gallery!
AT-AT Everywhere 
A+. every bit as good as it looks.
I’m not sure how you did it, but you captured your likeness perfectly.
Also, you’re so sweet you make me barf