Ice Cream: I said *this close*

Me and ice cream, we go way back. Growing up, our freezer was always stocked with half gallons of Blue Bell ice cream, snicker ice cream bars, Klondike bars, fudgesicles, etc. A regular ice cream treat after dinner was never considered extravagant - it was the norm. Even back a few years ago when I was counting calories to lose the weight college life had bestowed on me, I always left enough calories to eat a Dove ice cream bar every night.

Maybe it's because I grew up where it's warm 10 months of the year, but ice cream has always been a steady and regular part of my diet. So last week when I said I was *this close* to being tired of ice cream, it was a bit of an exaggeration - but not terribly so! I was tired of ice cream, but I was nowhere near giving it up. Then I found this recipe for an ice cream cake.

If you think I have an odd relationship with ice cream, wait till you read about me and ice cream cake. My birthday is in June, so every year I'd pick out my birthday cake from Baskin Robbins. This was simply the best part of birthdays. I loved ice cream cake so much that it was truly tragic to me when Baskin Robbins changed the flavor or recipe of their icing, and I found myself no longer wanting to hoard the rose shaped icings atop the cake. There's just something about mixing cake (yum) with ice cream (yum) that's, well, magical.

This recipe sounded delicious, but the trio of chocolate gave me pause for two reasons: 1) it seemed like the cake would be way too rich, sickly rich; 2) Bogdan doesn't like chocolate times three. So I tweaked it into a Neapolitan cake, with some peanut butter thrown in there for good measure to make my hubs happy. Here is the modified recipe:

Neapolitan Ice Cream Cake
Modified from Rachael Ray's Recipe


INGREDIENTS:
1 cup (1/2 pint) heavy cream
8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 12-ounce strawberry angel food cake, cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices
2 pints vanilla ice cream, softened
Nilla wafers, plus 4 crushed wafers

DIRECTIONS:
In a small saucepan, bring the heavy cream to a boil over medium-high heat. Put the chocolate chips and peanut butter in a heatproof medium bowl and pour the boiling cream over the chocolate. Let sit until the chocolate and peanut butter is melted, about 2 minutes. Stir the mixture with a fork for about 2 minutes, until the ganache is smooth.

Line a nonstick 9 x 5 x 3¾-inch loaf pan with 2 overlapping sheets of plastic wrap, allowing a 4-inch overhang on all sides.

Pour half of the ganache (1 cup) evenly into the lined pan and spread to cover the base. Cover the ganache with a single layer of tightly packed cake slices; be sure the layer is flat and even. Working quickly, spread 1 pint of the vanilla ice cream evenly over the pound cake. Cover the ice cream with a layer made of the Nilla wafers. Spread the remaining ganache evenly over the wafers, then top the ganache with another layer of Nilla wafers, and place the cake in the freezer for about 30 minutes to chill and firm up.

Remove the cake from the freezer and spread the rest of the ice cream over the wafers. Top with another flat, single layer of tightly packed slices of cake, trimming 1 or 2 slices to fill in the gaps (there will be a few slices left over). The cake may be slightly higher than the pan. Cover the cake completely with the plastic overhang and freeze until firm, at least 5 hours or overnight.

To loosen the ice cream cake from the pan, open the plastic wrap and invert the pan over a flat serving platter. Remove the plastic wrap. Scatter the crushed Nilla wafers over the ice cream cake, then slice and serve immediately.