Candy Cane Forest Peppermint Ice Cream Cake

A candy cane peppermint ice cream cake is just right for a winter birthday! Inspired by the movie, “Elf” this candy cane forest cake is delicious and oh so festive!

When your birthday is the week before Christmas you can either shun all things Christmas related, or embrace them. Aaron decided to embrace them this year and asked to have an “Elf” birthday party. Not only is that one of our favorite Christmas movies, but it is also such an easy party theme!

We ate waffles for dinner with syrup and marshmallows, watched “Elf”, played “Elf Yourself” and enjoyed this delicious Candy Cane Ice Cream Cake. If you are missing the relationship between Elf and this cake, read on…

“I passed through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops, and then I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel.”—Buddy the Elf.

This is where the inspiration for a Candy Cane Forest cake came from. This cake was delicious. I loved having a frosting-less cake. Call me crazy, but I’m not big on frosting. Ice cream and cool whip were perfect substitutes. And not just ice cream, but PEPPERMINT ice cream. One of my favorites!

Two round Devil’s Food cakes, each cut in half and filled with a half a gallon of peppermint ice cream. Frosted in Cool Whip, sprinkled with holiday Oreos and adorned with candy canes (still in their wrappers to keep them from getting sticky).

The process was messy!

The key is to making this peppermint ice cream cake is to work quickly and freeze the cake in between each step.

Lots of quick freezes to keep it COLD and it quickly began to take shape. As you can see, by the photo above, I didn’t work quickly enough at first. I was able to smooth out the ice cream and it froze completely.

I did a quick layer of cool whip and then froze it again (each freeze was for about 15 minutes) before adding a final layer to cover all of the crumbs.