I love cake, though I am adamant that frosting is the best part. Ice cream, however, is another dessert I hold near and dear to my heart. When I lived on campus, I used to get milkshakes at Flix, regardless of the temperature outside, because they were just that good.

When it was hot over the summer, I thought I might as well get an ice cream cake for my roommates and I to share. Two birds, one stone and all. We felt the ice cream cake was inferior as opposed to having cake and ice cream as separate entities served together. It sparked a question that remained with me since: is ice cream cake actually inferior, or did we just eat it wrong?

Nathan Waltz, sophomore computer science major, said he thinks cake and ice cream are better than ice cream cake.

Waltz said cake and ice cream paired together is sweeter than just an ice cream cake.

Like my roommates and I, Waltz said the difference in moisture content was significant. We found our ice cream cake to be dry compared to a regular cake with ice cream.

“You don’t want to have dry cake, you definitely want the cake to be moist,” Waltz said.

He said his ultimate combination would be a black forest cake with vanilla ice cream while the worst combination would be mint ice cream with chocolate and peanut butter cake. 

Hallie Cromwell, sophomore environmental science major, preferred ice cream cake.

“I definitely like ice cream cake better because I hate cake by itself,” Cromwell said.

In Cromwell’s experience, cake is nearly always dry and overly sugary. She said she gets excited about cake every time only to realize, once again, that she hates it. On the other hand, Cromwell would rate ice cream cake as a four out of 10 on the scale of all desserts. 

Cromwell said the last time she had an ice cream cake there was no frosting, only a layer of ice cream on top of a little bit of cake just the way she enjoys it. She said it sat out just long enough for the cake to absorb moisture from the ice cream.

The best flavor combination Cromwell could think of is cookies and cream ice cream with chocolate cake on the bottom, whereas the worst combination would be pumpkin ice cream with fruitcake, she said.

Cromwell and I came to the conclusion that not allowing the ice cream cake to sit out long enough was likely my mistake. I will have to try again sometime, to see if my opinion changes.

It is thanks to Cromwell that I learned two new things – leave ice cream cake out for a while, and also pumpkin ice cream exists and is apparently not very good.

“You have to try it to understand the flavor, but I’ll also say don’t try it because it’s awful,” Cromwell said.

Honestly, that just makes me want to try the pumpkin ice cream even more. It couldn’t be worse than the time my roommate mixed wasabi and whipped cream then made us all taste it because he could. Word of advice — don’t do that.