Vegan Ice Cream Cake

School's out for the summer!  Until summer school, that is.  The end of the school year was a frenzy, as usual, and the kids knew that I would bring in a vegan dessert to celebrate their hard work.  I generally bake a cake, but it was a bit hot to turn the oven on that week.  I stumbled across a recipe for ice cream pie on Pinterest, and decided to give it a try.  What I came up with was my own very similar version, which is a cake, rather than a pie.  I even went to the vegan ice cream parlor and bought some of their hot fudge to include in the cake.

Ingredients
1/2 box chocolate Teddy Grahams
5 tablespoons melted Earth Balance
1 pint Trader Joe's chocolate coconut milk ice cream
1 pint Trader Joe's strawberry coconut milk ice cream
1/2 bag Trader Joe's semisweet chocolate chips
*vegan hot fudge, cooled

What to Do
1.  Mash the Teddy Grahams into crumbs using a potato masher.
2.  Melt the Earth Balance and combine it with the cookie crumbs until evenly coated. 
3.  Press the cookie crumb mixture into the bottom of a square Pyrex dish.  Freeze for 30 minutes.
4.  Pull the frozen cookie crumbs out of the freezer.  Mash one flavor of ice cream evenly onto the cookie crumb crust, followed by the second layer, giving you two layers of ice cream.
5.  If you are including vegan hot fudge, spread that on top of the ice cream layers.
6.  Spread the chocolate chips over the top of the cake.
7.  Freeze for at least 1 hour before serving.

This ice cream cake was very easy to make, and my 5th and 6th graders loved it.  I used the Trader Joe's ice cream because it's cheap (vegan ice cream can be so pricey) and delicious.  You can use whatever brand or flavor you like.  There's a lot of room for experimenting with this recipe - so have fun!

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