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Ice cream sundaes don’t have to be a special occasion treat that you spend over 10 dollars on at an ice cream shop. You can actually make an ice cream sundae dessert at home with your favorite store-bought ice cream and toppings in a casserole dish that you can enjoy every day of the week this summer.
While we’ve explored transforming ice cream sandwiches into an ice cream cake with the help of a casserole dish, whipped cream, and garnishes, a DIY sundae dessert has more room for customization of both flavor and texture. Plus, the focus is more on the ice cream itself as the foundational layer for the toppings.
To build the dessert, you’ll start by thawing ice cream so it’s soft enough to spread over the bottom of a casserole dish or pie tin with the help of a silicone spatula like this set from Chef Aid. Then you can top the ice cream with a layer of diced candy bars, cookie crumbles, or praline, followed by a third fluffier layer of Cool Whip. Next, you’ll freeze the sundae dessert for around four hours to firm up. You’ll now have ice cream sundaes for the whole week to cut out of the casserole dish, add to your own personal bowl, and finish with a drizzle of chocolate sauce and a maraschino cherry.
Ice cream sundae dessert combinations
An ice cream sundae dessert really only needs three layers, and thus only three ingredients. But that’s the only basic rule that you can take in so many different directions. We recommend using a multi-ingredient candy bar to bring more complexity to a sundae dessert. That said, if you’re using a candy bar with caramel like Snickers, Milky Way, or Twix, we recommend dicing the bars up into manageable chunks as frozen caramel is hard to chew in large doses. Cookies and wafers are also good options with a wide variety of textures and flavors. Top vanilla ice cream with a layer of crushed Nutter Butters followed by Jet Puffed Marshmallow Creme to garnish with a drizzle of microwaved peanut butter or butterscotch and some chopped peanuts.
You can also choose a type of ice cream with tons of mix-ins, like any of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavors, for a foundation that’s more texturally and flavorfully diverse. If you’re an ice cream purist, you can make a complex ice cream foundation by choosing two or three different flavors to spoon into columns or rows across a casserole dish. For example, you can spread a column of vanilla ice cream, coffee ice cream, and Dutch chocolate ice cream to vary the taste of your ice cream sundae bowls throughout the following week or two. Top the ice cream with crushed Heath bars, Cool Whip, and a drizzle of this homemade salted caramel sauce.
