A few days after our daughter celebrated her birthday by skydiving, we celebrated in a more down-to-earth way with a quiet family dinner of Chicken Parmesan over pasta and birthday ice-cream cake.(how-to recipe at bottom of this post)

I tried something a little different when breading the chicken.  Instead of the usual flour/egg/breadcrumbs procedure, I skipped the eggs, soaked the chicken in buttermilk, then into the flour, back into the milk then into the breadcrumbs.  Extra messy but the chicken was moist and tender!
If you don’t want to bother with the buttermilk, the standard breading is always good.

Ice ~ Cream Cake

1 package Oreo Cookies

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 container vanilla ice cream, softened

1 container ice cream flavor of your choice, softened

1 container Cool Whip, thawed

Make crumbs from cookies in blender or with rolling pin. Combine crumbs and melted butter, reserving 1 cup of crumbs.Firmly press remaining crumbs over bottom and up sides of a 9 or 10-inch springform pan. Freeze until firm (15 minutes).

Remove from freezer and spread vanilla ice cream in an even layer. Sprinkle with reserved crumbs. Return to freezer until ice cream is firm.  

Spread second container of ice~cream. Cover top with foil and freeze, at least 4 hours or overnight. 

Remove the springform side band and place ice-cream cake onto a serving plate/cake safe with a lid.

Frost as desired with the whipped topping. Cover and freeze.

If you want to personalize the cake top, place about 1/4 cup melting chocolate in the microwave at power 30 for 30 second intervals, stirring each time until melted. Pour in to piping bag and decorate.

Return the ice-cream cake to freezer until ready to serve, allowing 10-15 minutes thawing time to make cutting easier.  Cake can be made and frozen up to two weeks ahead but be sure to wrap well with plastic wrap and cover with foil or cover to keep air out.