Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food Ice Cream Cake

I’ll admit, I did not think this would work when I started. I was apprehensive about the end results and I’d accepted failure before I’d even weighed out the flour. But I was interested, and so I thought I’d give it a go. This recipe is nuts, and it will feel unnatural to bake, but trust me, it is sooo worth making.

The cake itself is spongy, light and low in sugar. The idea of this cake is that it uses only two ingredients: ice cream and flour. That’s it. Crazy, right?! But it does actually make sense.

Ice cream is mainly made out of cream and sugar, therefore the sugar and the fat in it compensate for the butter and cane sugar that will be absent from the batter. I did some research before making the cake, looking into which ice creams had the highest sugar content and it turned out that Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food fit the bill perfectly, and so off I went to the supermarket to buy myself a tub of the stuff. You don’t have to use this particular ice cream if you don’t want to, use any ice cream you like as long as the sugar content is reasonable (nobody wants to eat a bland cake). But I can’t stress enough that you can not use fat free ice cream. You’ll need that fat to get an actual cake out of this recipe.

This cake is incredibly subtle in terms of sweetness, so I’d advise you to dust them with icing sugar generously just to give it some oomph. But you could always top it with butter-cream if you’re feeling fancy. Butter-cream makes everything taste better…

Okay, so here’s the recipe:

• 1 x 500ml tub of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food Ice Cream
• 175g self raising flour

Firstly start of by preheating your oven to gas mark 5/190°C/375°F. Grease a rectangular baking tray (but you can use an ordinary cake tin or even a muffin tin) and line with baking parchment/grease-proof paper.

Sift your flour into a large bowl and set aside. In a different bowl, empty out the entire tub of ice cream and beat ferociously with a wooden spoon or spatula until you’re left with a softened sloppy mess. Add all of the soft ice cream to the flour and mix together until the two ingredients are well combined.

Do not panic, the batter will be very thick, but that just means the cake is going to rise and be beautifully soft when it comes out of the oven. Empty the entire contents of the bowl into your prepared cake tin and smooth it out to the edges whilst doing your best to make it level.

Pop your cake into the centre of the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes (mine took 23 minutes), depending on whether or not your toothpick comes out clean when you insert it into the middle of the cake.

Although it’s painful, allow your cake to cool completely before dusting the top with icing sugar and cutting it up. The icing sugar will melt and make the cake look ugly. You didn’t come this far to produce an ugly cake, so you’ll have to wait for it.

When the cake is cool, dust the top generously with your icing sugar and chop up into equal sizes.

Et voila! A gorgeous cake made entirely out of simple ingredients, what could be easier?! (apart from just eating the ice cream)