If you need a dessert that will wow the crowd in a hurry, look no further than this easy ice cream cake recipe… Prepare it in just 5 minutes (plus freezing time)!

Ice Cream Cake Recipe

Once upon a time, my husband decided he’d like to host a “small” 4th of July cookout… You’d think I would have learned by now that my husband never does anything small. So I really shouldn’t have been surprised when, what started as a guest list of about 25 friends and family, quickly spiraled to upwards of 50 people.

To say I was feeling a tad stressed out is an understatement. Luckily he asked everyone to bring a side or dessert, but we’d already made two additional trips to Walmart for more meat, utensils, napkins, trash bags, etc… Being a firm believer that you can just never have too many desserts, I also asked him to grab the ingredients for my favorite ice cream cake recipe on his last (and I hoped final) trip.

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How To Make Ice Cream Cake

The good news is this is seriously the easiest ice cream cake recipe ever! It requires no baking, and you can totally customize it however you prefer. I chose to make an Oreo ice cream cake with chocolate ice cream, coupled with vanilla ice cream sandwiches, crushed Oreo cookies, and a thin layer of Smucker’s hot fudge. Dare I say it might even be better than a Dairy Queen ice cream cake?!

Normally I’d make my own homemade whipped cream, but since I was in a pinch for time, I asked him to grab a can of Reddi-wip. He brought home a can of their extra creamy variety to top it off. Can I just say this stuff is like heaven in a can?!?

Ice Cream Sandwich Cake

This ice cream cake recipe starts with a 9″x5″ loaf pan that’s been lined with a piece of plastic wrap that’s long enough to hang over the edges. Don’t skip this step, because this is what will allow you to easily lift the entire cake out of the pan once it’s frozen solid.

Let your ice cream set out until it’s nice and soft. Then spread a layer that’s about 1/2-inch thick evenly across the bottom of the pan, making sure to push and smush it into all of the corners.

Next, line up 5 ice cream sandwiches on top of the ice cream layer. They will be a bit of a tight fit, but just keep pressing down firmly and they’ll conform to the pan.

On top of the ice cream sandwiches, I spread about half a jar of hot fudge topping, and topped that off with a layer of crushed Oreo cookies. Make sure to reserve about 1/4 cup of the crushed cookies to sprinkle on top later!

P.S. If you have the time and inclination, I can’t recommend this 5-minute, 5-ingredient hot fudge sauce recipe enough. One batch will provide more than enough for this ice cream sandwich cake, along with leftovers for later sundaes.

Finally, I added another layer of the chocolate ice cream and folded the plastic wrap over the top. Into the freezer it went for about four hours to freeze solid throughout.

How simple is that?!? After freezing, I lifted the ice cream cake from the pan using the plastic wrap and transferred it to a serving platter. Then I topped it off with the Reddi-wip and a sprinkling of the reserved crushed Oreo cookies. You could also warm up some more hot fudge sauce to drizzle over the top — yum!

Easy Ice Cream Cake Recipe Doubled

Because you’re only using about half of each of the ingredients to make one cake, you could easily stretch your purchase to make TWO ice cream cakes. Just be sure to divide the ice cream evenly between two loaf pans. That makes this a fun and frugal dessert — perfect for last-minute summer cookouts!

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