Chocolate Peanut Butter Crunch Ice Cream Cake

Three ingredients.

That’s all is takes to make this incredibly fun, crispy, crunchy, chocolatey, cool dessert.  This ice cream cake is so easy to put together, and it knocked the socks off of my family at a cookout over the weekend.  My husband even mentioned after dessert that he’d like me to make this cake for his birthday…which isn’t until next April.

I originally came across this recipe, for a Nutella Crunch Ice Cream Cake.  It sounded delicious enough, and I was eager to try it, but not everyone in my family is a big Nutella fan.  I remembered that I had recently seen that Reese’s had come out with a chocolate-peanut butter spread.  It hangs out in the same aisle as the Nutella, so I grabbed a jar of Reese’s and figured I’d give the recipe a whirl with that instead.

Have you ever tried this stuff?  Oh my goodness.  It’s insanely good.  It’s “Hide the Jar from Your Kids and Eat a Spoonful or Two After They Go to Bed” good.  It’s “Spread it on Apples and Convince Yourself it’s Health Food” good.  And in this case, it’s “Use an Entire Jar Along with some Rice Krispies and Vanilla Ice Cream to Make a Cake” good.

First things first, I put a large mixing bowl and my 10-inch springform pan in the freezer to chill.  Then, I started the cake by scooping out an entire jar of Reese’s spread into a saucepan, and I warmed it over low heat until it was smooth and easy to stir.  I removed it from the heat and stirred in six cups of Rice Krispies.

Once that was well combined, and the cereal was completely coated, I poured the mixture onto a cookie sheet that I’d lined with parchment paper.

I popped the Krispie mixture into the freezer for about thirty minutes.  Meanwhile, I took my ice cream out of the freezer and allowed it to soften a bit.

When the Krispies were chilled, but not totally frozen solid, I removed them from the freezer and sliced them into small squares with a knife.  Then, I went through and broke those squares up into smaller crumbles with a fork.

After I’d broken it up a bit, I placed the tray back into the freezer to harden up a little more before I stirred it into the ice cream.

I put the softened ice cream into the chilled large bowl, and stirred it until it was soft and stirrable, kind of like soft serve.  Then, I got my Krispie bits out of the freezer, reserved a couple of cups of it for the topping, and then stirred them into the softened ice cream.

I did this in batches, because that’s a lot of Krispies!

Once all of the chocolate-peanut butter Krispies were in the ice cream, I got the chilled springform pan out of the freezer and spread all of the ice cream into the pan, to the tippy top.

Once it was smoothed out and even on top, I took the two cups of reserved Krispies that I’d set aside and pressed them into the top.  I covered the cake in a few sheets of plastic wrap, and popped it back into the freezer.

Fast forward a day, and about thirty minutes before dessert, I removed the cake from the freezer to soften a bit.

I released the cake from the pan, and removed the sides…

 …and we dug right in.

The cake sliced beautifully, although I highly recommend cutting it on a cutting board so the board can catch the melted ice cream from the sides.

My biggest concern with this cake was whether or not the Rice Krispies would stay crisp after sitting in ice cream overnight.  They were perfect!  It was, by far, the best dessert I’ve made all summer.  And it couldn’t have been much simpler.  I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of this cake in our future.  And I’m definitely buying another jar of that Reese’s spread.  Shhhh…don’t tell the kids.

 CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER CRUNCH ICE CREAM CAKE