Why Cheap Ice Cream May Actually Improve Your Homemade Ice Cream Cake

Professional bakers might argue that a delicious cake tastes good due in large part to high-quality ingredients. So it follows that for an ice cream cake recipe, you'll want the cream of the crop of gourmet ice cream brands, right? Well, no. Surprisingly, cheap ice cream may be the better ingredient for a homemade ice cream cake.

If anyone is an experienced ice cream connoisseur, it's Tyler Malek, co-founder and master ice-cream maker at the wildly popular artisanal ice cream chain Salt and Straw. When we asked Malek what type of ice cream makes the best ice cream cake, he told us, "I would say 90% of the ice cream cakes you get use an ice cream that has a ton of air and very little fat."

Coincidentally, ice cream with more air than fat is usually what differentiates gourmet ice cream from cheaper, generic kinds. It's also the difference between standard ice cream and its creamier custard-like cousin, gelato. Churning cream and sugar together as they freeze introduces air into ice cream, which is key to softening it. A larger proportion of air translates into ice cream that's light and fluffy rather than creamy and dense.

Malek considers less-expensive airy ice cream an advantage for ice cream cakes, saying, "When you've got that much air, it's lighter and has more of its own insulation, so it's less likely to melt on you while you're decorating it." In short, you get more time to create your cake before everything melts.

Fluffier ice cream is defined by a higher percentage of overrun which is the term used for the measurement of how much air is in ice cream. If you're wondering how to measure a weightless and invisible element, the answer is by looking at the volume of the ice cream once it's finished churning. The more air that's introduced into ice cream, the larger the volume. Overrun is the difference between the initial volume of raw ingredients and the volume of the final product.

While gourmet, expensive brands tend to have smaller overruns, cheaper generic brands have larger overruns. That's why you'll often see cheap ice creams sold by the gallon and expensive ice cream sold by the pint. The reason cheap brands have large overruns is because air is free, so a larger ratio of air to costly dairy products results in an ice cream that's cheaper to make, and thereby cheaper to buy. You may be getting more ice cream for a cheaper price, but you'll notice a major difference in taste and texture.

When you use low-cost ice cream in an ice cream cake, other ingredients in the recipe will compensate for a potentially underwhelming, air-diluted flavor profile. Layers of cake or cookies along with hand-whipped cream, sauce drizzles, and crushed candy toppings will amp up the ice cream you pair them with for the most delicious and structurally sound ice cream cake.