No matter if you’re 3 or 103, the glee you feel when you show up to a function and see an ice cream cake is universal. Ice cream cakes are, of course, a great choice for a birthday party, but, in recent years, chains have found ways to make ice cream cakes more acceptable at all events in your life. Whether that’s adding a holiday-themed ice cream cake to Christmas dinner or buying a soccer ball-shaped one to celebrate a championship win, the ice cream cake options are practically endless—and the places you can get them from are, too.
Your ice cream cake options can be even more customizable than traditional cake—depending on where you buy it from. In addition to a “Happy Birthday” message, you often have a lot more customization options for the base, like your favorite Dairy Queen Blizzard or Baskin-Robbins flavor. Plus, the question remains, do you get a cake that’s all ice cream or one that’s half ice cream, half cake?
We’ve been through the ice cream cake possibilities predicament quite a few times, so we’ve decided to choose the end-all, be-all ice cream cake once and for all. We tested ice cream cakes from popular chain restaurants and grocery stores, to determine which ice cream cake is really the best.
How I Chose the Best Ice Cream Cakes
I opted for ice cream cakes that are available at chains with near-nationwide reach. From there, I selected the most “classic” ice cream cake each chain offers, which was typically a combination or variation of of chocolate and vanilla.
How I Tested the Best Ice Cream Cakes
I followed each ice cream cake’s specific instructions for how to thaw and serve it optimally. Then, I and a panel of four other testers judged the cakes based on overall taste, price, icing, and the textures and flavors of the ice cream as well as the cake and/or crunchies. We ranked each aspect, then chose the best cake by averaging the scores.
The Best Ice Cream Cakes, Ranked
6th Place: Friendly’s
Allrecipes / Qi Ai
Friendly’s Celebration Ice Cream Cake features layers of “premium” chocolate and vanilla ice cream with chocolate crunchies in between. The cake is finished with whipped frosting and costs about $22 at the grocery store.
While it was easy to cut into, we were met with a mess inside. The crunchies are not held together with anything, so it’s almost like a sprinkle-filled reveal cake when you take the slice out. The ice cream had an icy consistency and one of the testers said the flavor was akin to the ice cream you got from the elementary school cafeteria and ate with a wooden spoon (read: not great).
Overall, Friendly’s ice cream cake is a fine grocery store option for a kid’s birthday party, but it doesn’t hold up to the adult palate.
5th Place: Baskin-Robbins
Allrecipes / Qi Ai
Baskin-Robbins’ Celebration Party Cake features a layer of real cake topped with ice cream. I opted for white cake with chocolate ice cream, which costs $40.
Cutting into this cake is pretty difficult because there’s really no scenario where the cake will be thawed but the ice cream will still be frozen. You’re basically cutting through a rock-hard cake, then eating a frozen cake with slightly thawed ice cream.
We loved the actual ice cream in the cake, it had a delicious cocoa flavor. What tanked Baskin-Robbins’ score, however, was the actual cake. It’s dense and doesn’t have a lot of flavor, and some testers even noted it had a strange aftertaste.
If the cake were all ice cream, I think it would have ranked closer to the top, since we all enjoyed the actual ice cream layer. But, with the bland, dense, and dry cake at the bottom, it falls to the bottom of the ranking.
4th Place: Cold Stone Creamery
Allrecipes / Qi Ai
Cold Stone Creamery’s Birthday Cake is made with Sweet Cream ice cream, devil’s food cake, frosting, and sprinkles. It’s priced starting at $30.
The cake we ate had a lot more ice cream in it than cake, which we did enjoy. However, the cake itself was the best cake out of the three options that used real cake. It was moist and flavorful and wasn’t frozen solid.
The Sweet Cream ice cream was a good, creamy consistency, but some testers didn’t like the flavor. Testers also found the icing with sprinkles to be a little too sweet.
3rd Place: Salt & Straw
Allrecipes / Qi Ai
Salt & Straw’s The Cake uses the premium ice creamery’s signature Birthday Cake & Blackberries ice cream flavor. It features seven layers of rainbow-filled cake, cream cheese frosting, and sprinkles—along with the the aforementioned triple-vanilla ice cream with blackberry jam. This luxurious cake rings in at a whopping $79.
The ice cream was, unsurprisingly, delicious. It tasted homemade and with a burst of flavor some testers compared to blueberry Pop-Tarts or Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams Brambleberry Crisp flavor. The cake itself was good, but we all really enjoyed the cream cheese frosting, which provided a nice tangy balance to the sweetness of the rest of the layers.
Salt & Straw’s crunchy layer is made of of crispy birthday cake-like crumbles compared to the traditional cookie-based ice cream cake crunchies. We found this top layer just a bit too sweet.
Overall, the cake was incredibly delicious, but it didn’t bring the nostalgia of a classic ice cream cake, like the rest of the cakes in the test did. That, coupled with the hefty price tag, meant this cake fell to the middle of the rankings.
2nd Place: Carvel
Allrecipes / Qi Ai
Carvel has been credited with creating the very first ice cream cake and its Happy Birthday Round Cake is made with chocolate and vanilla ice cream (which bills itself as “The Original Soft Serve”) separated by a layer of crunchies and topped with whipped frosting. The cake costs $25 at the restaurant, and you can also find it at the grocery store for a similar price.
Especially when compared to Salt & Straw, Carvel’s ice cream cake is certainly a nostalgic one. Many of the testers grew up eating Carvel’s ice cream cakes, but were disappointed to see that the crunchies layer wasn’t as thick as they remembered it. Carvel has perfected the chocolate cookie pieces, so we wished there had been more in the slice.
The ice cream was good, if maybe a little artificial tasting, but, all in all, the nostalgia factor really cemented Carvel in this second place slot. This is what an ice cream cake should be.
1st Place Winner: Dairy Queen
Allrecipes / Qi Ai
Dairy Queen’s Signature All Occasion Cake features chocolate and vanilla soft serve ice cream separated by both crunchies and a layer of chocolate fudge. The cake is decorated with whipped frosting and costs about $28.
DQ’s first place spot was nearly unanimous among all five testers, with only one person naming another cake as the best. The cake was five stars all around, from the delicious ice cream’s creamy consistency to the not-too-sweet icing and, of course, its gooey fudge and crunchy center. The fudge is really what sets DQ apart from its competitors because it adds another flavor and textural dimension to the cake—plus, it gives the crunchies a way to stay in place when you cut the cake.
Personally, I wasn’t surprised that Dairy Queen won, but I’m happy that the Midwestern favorite is getting the recognition it deserves.
