Hi everyone,

I'm making an ice cream cake for a birthday party. The top layer of cake has the middle cut out and filled with ice cream. The cake would look nicer if I used a fondant covering but the cake will need to be kept cold and the ice cream will chill the fondant from the underside. I'm planning to put it together the day of the party and covering first with buttercream then fondant.  Do you think I'm tempting fate? I could just do the decorations with fondant but I really want that smooth look.

Oh, I'm fairly new to fondant so no expert eye to recover from problems that may develop : )

Thanks in advance,

Aomg fcndanting an ice cream cake sounds like sheer mind blowing torture to me and you're a novice?

Lol, so you say no? The decorations would be ok though, wouldn't they?

How humid is the weather where you live?

I'm in Phoenix so, very dry.

It might be OK, then. Humidity is what hurts fondant coming out of the fridge.

But I think I'd just use buttercream and fondant decorations, to be on the safe side.

Yeah, sounds like I should wait until I have more experience with fondant.

Thank you both for your help!

AI did an ice cream cake with fondant decorations last December, which is the start of summer in Australia. My cake was a thin brownie layer, topped with homemade vanilla ice cream, with hidden strawberry ice cream hearts and discs inside. I almost died when the mum of the birthday girl asked me to decorate it like one of my fondant cakes - I couldn't see how it would be possible!

In the end, I made a fondant disc with the message and daisy decorations taken from the theme of the invitations. I also made little fondant discs with small daisies for the side of the cake, and small daisies for the top of the cake. At the party (my daughter was also invited so I was there to serve the cake!), I used a bag of whipped cream to attach all the decorations to the ice cream cake. They all held for the 60 minutes the birthday mum took to serve first and second servings of the cake. It had been stored in a freezer at -18 deg Celcius.

The cake held up fine and ate well. Nothing got sticky or soggy, but the decorations were only on the cake for a short time. I definitely wouldn't pre-decorate this type of cake.

Thank you winniemog. Sounds like a good middle ground you found. I think I'll add the decorations last too. I like the disc idea, but maybe I'll try that for a home cake.

I've decorated ice cream cakes numerous times with fondant decorations but I always put them on after I take the cake out of the freezer to display (quickly).

When possible, I prefer to decorate my ice cream cakes with chocolate pieces that I have molded in candy molds. They hold up great in the freezer and if you use a good candy coating, they taste great.