red velvet viennetta ice cream cake

Left: Overview of the cake
Right: Slice of the cake

When I was a kid, I saw Viennetta ice cream cakes in the frozen food aisle of some now-defunct supermarkets(I'm looking at you, Waldbaum's and Pathmark, RIP; those two supermarkets were at one point rated the worst and dirtiest supermarkets in the entire nation, according to Consumer Reports, which I can believe). My mom never let me buy the cake, but then again she never let me choose the pair of glasses with flowers on them because they looked too babyish. I'm wearing them right now, this is the ultimate revenge. But in all seriousness, I loved my mom.

I don't think you can find Viennetta cakes anywhere in the USA today(maybe in Canada though), so the next best thing is to make your own cake.

Of course, the traditional Viennetta cake was made with vanilla ice cream and topped with a chocolate topping. I am obviously not traditional when it comes to food. Besides, a red ice cream cake is eye-catching from a distance. Red Velvet ice cream is the ice cream with the strangest color I could find, and even then it was at a ShopRite at least 10 miles from my home.

You know what else is eye catching- birthday cake Magic Shell! It's unnaturally blue.

I thought with the addition of the Magic Shell, the cake would taste too sweet, but it turned out to taste just sweet enough for me. However, that cake is in a queue of sorts because I'm still finishing off the ice cream birthday cake I bought from a local ice cream shop.

This Viennetta cake doesn't compare to that birthday cake, but it comes close. By the way, the flavors of the birthday cake I chose were Maraschino Cherry Chip (which is also a red ice cream) and Rainbow Cookie(my favorite type of cookie), but the outside of the cake is white, not red. I would share with you the picture of the cake but it would give away how old I am. Maybe next year, people, when I stop requesting to have the number of years I turned written in icing on my cake.

There are actually more cooking equipment needed than ingredients for this recipe. So it's a fairly easy recipe.

Inspiration for this recipe from http://www.southernplate.com/2012/06/homemade-viennetta.html.

You will need:

For the cooking equipment:

A loaf pan
A freezer
Wax paper
An unused flat hair comb(nobody likes hair in their cake. I recommend you throw away the comb you use for this recipe after using it because ice cream in your hair is gross. Unless you're into that sort of thing.)
Aluminum foil

For the cake:

1 quart(6 cups) of red velvet ice cream(or any ice cream flavor, really, since that particular flavor is hard to find in most supermarkets)
2 bottles of Magic Shell(the stuff that supposedly freezes upon contact with a frozen surface like ice cream. Spoiler alert: didn't happen with this recipe.)
Note: You can go traditional and use chocolate flavored-Magic Shell since that was the flavor of the coating on the original Viennetta cakes, but I used Birthday Cake-flavored and Rainbow Sherbet-flavored Magic Shells). Also, you're not going to need the entire bottles.

1. Let your ice cream sit at room temperature for 5-10 minutes. It makes scooping it out easier.
2. Line your loaf pan with wax paper.
3. Pour 2 cups of ice cream onto the lined loaf pan.
4. Flatten the ice cream into one layer using your hands.
5. Make rivets in the ice cream using your comb. This is where the Magic Shell will go.
6. Pour about 1-2 tbsp. of Magic Shell into the rivets in the ice cream for each layer.
7. Repeat steps 3-6 with the middle and top layers(it's a 3-layered cake). What I did was use the Birthday cake-flavored Magic Shell for the bottom and top layers, and I used Rainbow Sherbet for the middle layer)
8. Cover the loaf pan with aluminum foil and place loaf pan in the freezer overnight for the cake to set.
9. Bon appetit!