Ice Cream Cake Mess

In response to my last post, Rachel sent me the link to a webpage with beautiful, intricately decorated desserts: http://bakerella.blogspot.com/. It inspired me to make a cake for Mom's birthday last week. I didn't want to do a frosted cake with two layers and filling, so I tried to make an ice cream cake. It turned out reasonably well, other than a little bit of the melted vanilla ice cream making its way through the frosting. And in case you're wondering, that dark splotch is a butterfly made of cake crumbs (I copied the idea of using crumbs as decoration from some cupcakes in the Williams-Sonoma catalog):





The whole thing tasted fine, but it lacked the sophisticated, professional appearance I was going for. In case anyone else is thinking about making one, I'll share my technique and some lessons learned.
1) I started with a box of chocolate cake mix and made a single 9" cake (I used the excess batter to make some back-up cupcakes in case things went really wrong).
2) I cooled the cake on the counter, then in fridge, then the freezer. My first tip for success would be to not try to do make the whole ice cream cake in one night, because I think completely freezing the cake would have made things easier.
3) Once the cake was reasonably cool, I cut off the top to make it level (my cakes are always shaped like little volcanoes), set it on the platter (in my case it was a dinner plate) and put my 9" springform pan wall around it.
4) I had thawed some ice cream on the counter (next time I'll thaw it in the fridge to make it a more uniform consistency, not frozen in the middle and liquid on the outside). I used a spatula to spread the ice cream over the cake, making a layer about as thick as the cake portion. I put it in the freezer for a while to resolidify.
5) In the meantime I made some whipped cream (whipping cream + powdered sugar + a few minutes with my wonderful stand mixer). I removed the springform wall from the cake and started frosting and decorating it. This is where things went wrong. I knew it was extremely important to keep it cold, but I was having fun with the decorating and I was running out of time, and before I knew it I had little runnels of ice cream breaking through the whipped cream. Looking back I really should have paused between the frosting and the decorating and put it back in the freezer for a while.

Okay, I've wasted enough time at work, my boss said we should leave by noon (since it's Christmas Eve).

Merry Christmas!