Dairy Queen Copycat Ice Cream Cake

Dairy Queen is a favorite ice cream place for my family- especially for ice cream cakes. We tend to get quite a few ice cream cakes over the year for birthdays and other special occasions and the bills really add up! So here’s a much cheaper copycat version! Lots of fun to make and quite simple! Another great part is that you can add more of the best parts that you always wish the real stuff had- like more fudge in the middle! You can also change up the ice cream flavors, which is lots of fun! In this Instructable, I’ll be using Chocolate and Moose Tracks… yum! So let’s get started!

You’re going to need:

• 2 one gallon tubs of ice cream of whatever flavors you like! A few different combo ideas are: chocolate and vanilla; mint chocolate chip and chocolate; cheesecake and raspberry; caramel and coffee; etc… this list could go on forever!
• 2 1/2 cups fudge
• 8 ounces Cool Whip
• Family sized package of Oreos- you'll use them all, or at least parts of them all.
• 12 Reese’s pieces- as I was using moose tracks ice cream, I thought Reese's pieces would be a great decoration that would taste great with my ice cream choices as moose tracks is pretty much just chocolate with peanut butter and mini Reese's pieces. If you do a different combination of ice creams, pick a different candy that goes good with it!
• 10 inch springform pan

To begin, take you first ice cream flavor (I'm using Moose tracks) out of the freezer and leave it out for about twenty minutes to soften. Once it's soft, scoop it out of the carton and into the springform pan. You're going to use the whole gallon. When it's all in the pan, smooth it out with a spatula until it's relatively level.

Now put it back into the freezer while you do the next step!

Open your oreo package and take about three fourths of the oreos out and put them in a zip-lock bag. When shutting the zip-lock bag, make sure to get out the excess air before sealing. Then, take a spoon and begin to crush the oreos in the bag. After I got the majority crushed with the spoon, I was having a hard time getting the rest of the pieces, so I started using my hands- you can somewhat see what I did in the third picture.

When the oreos are pretty well broken up, transfer to a bowl. Set aside for a few minutes.

Take the rest of the oreos still left whole and open them all up, taking the frosting in the middle out and putting it in a separate bowl. You aren't going to need the actual cookie part on this. Only the frosting. Once all the oreos have lost their frosting middles, transfer the frosting to the bowl of crumbled oreos and thoroughly mix together. To get it well mixed I found I had to knead it quite a bit with my hands, as a spoon wasn't working too well.

When it's well mixed, set aside.

Take the ice cream cake out of the freezer and add fudge, spreading it over the ice cream to make a thick layer. It would help to microwave the fudge a little bit before spreading, but then you have to work extra fast so that the ice cream doesn't melt too much from the heat. As I did not have a microwave, I did not do that and it worked just fine... just a little bit harder to spread.

Then, take the oreo crumble and layer it onto the fudge, pressing it down so that it's not loose. Stick the cake back in the freezer to harden.

While the cake is hardening a bit, take the second ice cream flavor (I'm using plain chocolate) out of the freezer and allow to sit until soft, about twenty minutes. In that time span, the cake should have hardened a bit as well, so it should be ready to come out of the freezer to add the last layer of ice cream!

Spread the ice cream over the oreo layer thickly, just make sure that you lay down a thick layer of ice cream before smoothing or else the crumbled oreo with start to come off, which you don't want.

Once the ice cream layer is smooth, stick it back in the freezer to completely harden. How much time that takes really just depends on how melted it is. Just make sure that it's thoroughly frozen before taking it out of the freezer again!

Boil some water and pour it into a mug with a knife in it. This will help a lot with cutting the cake out of the pan! And it'll insure that more cake stays on the cake instead of stuck to the pan.

Now, take the cake out of the freezer. Using the hot knife, cut along the perimeter of the cake- as close as you can to the edge! When you think the cake is no longer stuck on the side of the pan, lift of the sides so that the cake is just on the bottom piece of the springform pan. I served the cake on that piece, but if you want a fancier plate underneath, this would be a time to transfer the cake onto that.

It's time to get out the Cool Whip! Yay! As this cake is made of ice cream, you're going to be using the cool whip as the "frosting". Before you begin to "frost" the cake, separate out a little less than half of the cool whip and put it into a piping bag. Then, coat the cake with cool whip, covering every inch so that none of the ice cream underneath is showing.

Then, using the piping bag, pipe a shell border along the top of the cake using a Wilton 18 piping tip. With the extra cool whip in the piping bag, I also piped six mounds around the shell border which I then decorated. But for now, put the cake back in the freezer because you don't want melted ice cream seeping out from under the cool whip!

Take your Reese's pieces and unwrap them. Believe it or not, it actually took quite some time (or at least it felt like it!) so the ice cream cake was pretty well frozen when I took it out again.

Now it's time to be creative! I put one whole Reese's piece on each Cool Whip mound, and then decorated around it with Reese's that were cut in half. Depending on what type of ice creams you picked and what kind of candy you chose, you can do it however you want! Have fun! It can be as simple as sprinkles and maraschino cherries or as complicated as upside down ice cream cones with dripping fudge! There's lots you can do with a simple, white ice cream cake palette!

When you're finished decorating, I recommend that you stick the cake back into the freezer before serving. Then enjoy! It tastes awesome:)