THINK OUTSIDE THE "CAKEBOX"

Contributed by Linda Mercurio, Mulberry Street Creamery, Kittanning, PA

It's FINALLY Spring!!! Here in the Northeast we've had a long, miserable winter and are so anxious for warm, sunny weather. We're also excited about our stores reopening and seeing all of our customers again! So, what new frozen novelties or specialty desserts do you have planned to offer that will WOW them this year? Nothing new from last season? Hmm. Let's think outside the "cake box" to come up with some incredible ideas for new and exciting desserts for your customers.

The ice cream dessert business should be more than just regular vanilla/chocolate cakes with the fudge and crumb coat center. Pies can be more than popular flavors in a graham cracker crust. While these cakes and pies are very popular and are great for birthdays, etc., so much more can be done with your ice cream to bring folks into your store to buy desserts on a regular basis.

Think about your local bakery: when you walk in you see cakes, pies and cookies. The cake case is filled with so many varieties, chocolate, yellow, pumpkin, carrot, lemon, but when you really think about it, they're all just cake. All of them are some sort of batter baked into different forms and shapes; some are plain, others are made to look fancy with whipped cream, gooey frosting, pretty flowers or sprinkled with something that gives a hint of what's inside. The same can be said for the pies and cookies. But when you stand back and look at the hundreds of items the bakery has to offer, it looks overwhelming, exciting - and - DELICIOUS! That's exactly what your customers should experience when looking at your frozen dessert case. You can make this happen using your ice cream!

Let's start with the cakes. I use real "baked" cake in all of my ice cream cakes. I purchase them from my supplier in two sizes, 8" round or ¼ sheet. For those of you who don't use any cake, you ought to try it, and for those of you who do, I'll show you some new uses for that cake. I offer what I call Specialty Cakes, which come in the following flavors: Lemon, Vanilla or Chocolate Turtle, Chocolate Raspberry or Strawberry Vanilla. Any flavors are fine, but these were the five best sellers in my area. They were invented to attract the customers who were in need of a cake for any reason other than a kid's birthday. These cakes are basically built the same way with slight variations.

1. Thaw the cake slightly and then cut in half, horizontally. This gives you two ¾ inch pieces. You'll need 1 whole and ½ of a second cake to make these cakes.

2. Place one of the cake halves on a board and wrap a 3" acetate ring around it. Tighten the acetate and tape it. Any bakery supplier will have these rings.

3. The next layer is ice cream, approximately ¾ inches of whatever flavor is desired.

4. Then comes the next layer of cake, then another ¾ inch of ice cream topped with the last layer of cake.

   Of the flavors I mentioned above, only the Lemon is built this exact way. The variations on the others are as follows:

   • Vanilla or Chocolate Turtle have a layer of caramel variegate and pecans on the ice cream before the next cake layer. Our Vanilla Turtle is made with yellow cake and vanilla custard. The Chocolate Turtle is chocolate cake and chocolate custard.

   • The Chocolate Raspberry Cake is chocolate cake, vanilla gelato, generous layer of raspberry variegate, etc. finishing with the cake.

   • The Strawberry Vanilla is white cake, strawberry gelato, strawberry variegate etc, ending with the cake.

5. Freeze the cake until hard and, before icing, remove the acetate ring to be sanitized and reused later.

These cakes are iced with non-dairy whipped cream icing around the sides and edges, but the tops on all, except the Lemon, are decorated with the caramel and pecans or variegate and fruits to make them really appealing. The Lemon is iced entirely and slices of lemons are arranged in a decorative pattern on the top.

The variations of what you can do with your ice cream and cake is endless, you'll just need to use a little ingenuity. Once you get the hang of putting them together, they're no work at all and they sell for more than regular ice cream cakes. They're popular for dinner parties, card club, adult birthdays, etc. and are really pretty when sliced because of all the layers. Don't forget about old-fashioned cake rolls. Buy the sponge cake and use your favorite ice cream to fill the center and then roll it up. Chocolate cake with vanilla custard sell the best, but Thanksgiving wouldn't be the same around here without Pumpkin rolls filled with cheesecake gelato. Now, on to pies.

Do you buy graham cracker piecrusts to make your pies? Try making your own. Graham cracker is only one type of crust. How about using your broken waffle cones for a crust or maybe cookie dough pieces. Just crush them with a rolling pin or use a food processor. Try adding coconut or nuts to graham crackers to give your customers a tasty surprise. Of course, there are always cookies that can be crushed and used as a crust too!

Have you ever thought of crushing chocolate wafers used for ice cream sandwiches? It makes a delicious crust. I use 5 parts of crumbs to one part of butter for the crusts (or enough butter for it to hold together).

Also, pies don't have to be assembled in a regular pie pan either. Henry from Henry's Homemade uses 9" round aluminum tins (sort of like Chinese take-out) to make and sell his wholesale pies. When he showed us that tin at the San Diego convention, a light bulb when off in my head and my pies have been better ever since. (You really should attend the conventions; you never know what simple idea you'll pick up that can make a hugh difference for your business). I now make many variations of 'pies' in these tins, layering the crust, fudge or caramel or fruit variegate then ice cream. Let this freeze, then remove it from the tin and place it on a cake board. I top the pie with the same filling and let it drip over the sides a little. Try decorating the tops with extra chocolate curls or dabs of whipped cream. It's very yummy looking: almost too good to leave behind when your customer is done with his/her cone.

We also make 'Tortes' at our store. We use 10" round x 2" high stainless steel rings lined around the inside with a 2" acetate strip. Place a thin layer (1/8 inch) of cake on the inside of the ring. The cake is only 8" around and should not touch the sides of the ring. Cake on the bottom makes the slices lift off of the board easier. This cake is then topped with two different flavors of ice cream (or four for Spumoni), which compliment each other. The first flavor is placed half way up the side of the ring over the cake and all the way to the edge. Freeze it solid. Then place the second flavor on top of it. When it's frozen, remove the ring, quickly, with a heat gun or hair dryer being careful to direct the heat on the ring only. This only takes a few seconds and the ring will release. Leave the acetate in place. It will protect the ice cream from oxidation and stickiness until it's sold. I decorate the top with a thin layer of variegate or homemade ganache which compliments the flavors. I always decorate the tops with chocolate curls, whole fruits or whipped cream which combined with the visual of the layers, make the tortes very attractive. Our most popular combinations are Chocolate/Peanut Butter, Strawberry/Lemon, Lemon/Key Lime, and Spumoni.

Next, lets talk about individual desserts. Other than the Specialty Cakes, all of our desserts are also made in individual portions, sold separately, or packaged in units of four. Metal rings come in individual portion sizes and are easy to use, but some of my wholesale accounts order 5 or more dozen individual portion desserts at a time, and instead of purchasing enough metal rings to facilitate the assembly line production we use to fill these orders, we use 2" or 3" PVC piping that has been cut into 2 inch lengths. We then line these with acetate. For a relatively inexpensive price, we had enough molds in the size we wanted. The PVC piping was another great idea I took away from a convention. Kelly Stone, from Kelly's Kone Konnection, gave this suggestion to me. We sell a lot of individual Tortes in our store that are packaged in groups of 4 or 6 to customers who are having a few guests to dinner and don't need a bigger dessert.

Mini pies are also a popular takeout with people who live alone, although we do sell quite a few to customers who originally came in to purchase a cone. Also, mini desserts are a great way to get rid of the final few scoops of ice cream at the bottom of the pan or tub in your case.

Finally, be creative with new variations on old favorites. How about slicing the brownies you use for sundaes in half horizontally and filling them with vanilla ice cream. Try dipping one end of it in chocolate cone coating, or roll it in nuts. We make homemade pizzelle cookies and sandwich vanilla gelato between them. Have you ever heard of a gob sandwich cookie? I never had before I moved to Kittanning, but it's two chocolate, vanilla, banana or pumpkin sponge cookies (pretty big, about 3" around and puffy) with vanilla cream filling in the center. I found out that our supplier had the gob cookies already made and now I fill them with vanilla custard and they are the most popular ice cream cookies I sell. Don't forget pecan balls. Roasted and salted pecans make a tremendous difference in the taste. While I was writing this article, I thought, "why are pecan balls always made with vanilla ice cream?" Don't Chocolate Pecan Balls sound yummy. I think we'll start making those today. Hmmm.

Just remember, think outside the "cake box" and use your imagination and your ice cream to make creative, fun, delicious specialty desserts for your customers to enjoy.