This Strawberry Crunch Ice Cream Cake is made with strawberry and vanilla ice cream, plus strawberry shortcake crunchies! It’s a delicious cake that’s perfect for summer!

Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream Cake

This ice cream cake is totally addicting! It’s inspired both by this Strawberry Ice Cream Crunchie Cake and these Strawberry Shortcake Ice Cream Bars. I grew up LOVING those ice cream bars and those little crunchy pieces on the outside were definitely the best part. I knew I had to incorporate them into this ice cream cake.

One other thing I had wanted to incorporate was a strawberry fudge layer, similar to the chocolate fudge layer in my Copycat Dairy Queen Ice Cream Cake. I’m a big fan of that fudge layer and really wanted a non-chocolate variation. Unfortunately, white chocolate is much more finicky. When I had the fudge layer at the right consistency, it never really froze completely and would slowly leak out of the sides of the cake. When I got it so that it wouldn’t leak, it was just too chewy and firm. Sadly, I had to abandon it.

This ice cream cake is still awesome – even without that! Of course you’ll want to use your favorite brand of ice cream, but when combined with the strawberry shortcake crunchies, it’s a fun and delicious ice cream cake!

How to make the strawberry crunchies

I tried a couple different options for these crunchies. One option was using golden Oreos as a cookie base and then flavoring some of them to be strawberry. The other option was playing around with using pudding mix – strawberry and vanilla – to add flavoring. Ultimately I didn’t think either of those gave the right flavor.

I ended up deciding on completely homemade crunchies. You’ll need:

• All purpose flour
• Sugar
• Freeze dried strawberries
• Butter
• Vanilla extract

You’ll use some flour, sugar and butter in each of the flavors of crunchy. Then you’ll add freeze dried strawberries (ground into a powder) for the strawberry crunchies and the vanilla extract for the vanilla ones. You basically make a crumble with each flavor and then bake them in the oven to crisp them up. After cooling, you can crumble them up further, if needed.

While freeze dried strawberries might be a little harder to find (I find them at grocery stores and Target pretty easily), they add the most real strawberry flavor and is definitely the way to go.

How to make a Strawberry Ice Cream Cake

After your strawberry shortcake crunchies are made, it’s time to layer the cake. But first let’s talk about the cake pan. I used an 8 by 3 inch cake pan, because I like a taller cake. You could definitely use a 9 inch pan though, and a springform pan would certainly be convenient. Either way is fine

Once you’ve got your pan, you’ll want to line the inside of it with clear wrap. You’ll use the clear wrap later to help lift the ice cream cake out of the pan. From there, add your strawberry ice cream and spread it evenly into the pan.

Add about a cup of the strawberry shortcake crunchies to the ice cream and spread evenly, then freeze everything for a couple hours, until fairly firm.

Add the vanilla ice cream layer on top, then freeze the whole cake until firm.

From there, you’ll make your whipped cream and frost the outside of the cake. The ice cream does melt quickly, so feel free to pop the cake in the freezer as needed. I did a quick outer coat, froze it for about 20 minutes, then did the final layer. I popped it back in the freezer for another 20 minutes before adding the crunchies, but you want to be sure not to wait too long or it might be harder for the crunchies to stick to the whipped cream.

Finally, add some freeze dried strawberry powder to the remaining whipped cream and pipe a border onto the top of the cake.

The final Strawberry Crunch Ice Cream Cake is not only beautiful, it’s delicious! I’m totally in love with all the strawberry shortcake crunchies! I hope you enjoy it too!

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