Monopoly anyone?

This week, my friend Thomas asked us to make a Monopoly-themed cake for his friend Cara's birthday. This hit close to my heart because Monopoly is my all-time favorite board game! However, this wouldn't just be any other cake...it was our first order for an ice cream cake! Yummy! They wanted chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream. Since I worked in the Publix bakery for a couple of years in high school, I had an idea of how to make them.

I leveled two thin pieces of chocolate cake, and placed one on the cake board. Then, I wrapped an acetate strip (you see these wrapped around Boston Cream Pies...they're not edible, but they're food-safe) around it. If you let the ice cream sit on the counter for about 20 minutes, it gets soft enough to spread on top of the piece of cake. This is where the acetate strip comes in handy because it holds the soft ice cream in the shape of your cake. Then, place the other chocolate cake on top and freeze until it's solid again. We froze it for a couple of hours and then Elise came over to help decorate it.



I had already made some gum paste Monopoly money, a thimble game piece, a hotel, a house, and a die. We piped properties around the sides of the cake and wrote "Happy Birthday Cara" on the top to go with all the sugar pieces I'd made. Too bad no one wanted to play Monopoly with me when we finished the cake....