Cold Stone’s Dark Peppermint Pleasure Cake: A Delicious Holiday Flavor

Cold Stone Creamery is a chain that is growing faster and faster every year. Their gimmick is that they make their own ice cream, but the real chefs are their customers. Each Cold Stone Creamery location carries their signature ice cream flavors, but customers can change that flavor into a variety of their own choosing. The employees stand behind a long counter, filled to the brim with a mixture of toppings and customers can pick the toppings themselves. Those toppings are then mushed into the ice cream on an ice cold counter. Its entirely possible for two customers to pick the same flavor, but end up with two entirely different flavors.

During the Christmas and holiday season, Cold Stone Creamery has a host of specialty flavors and deserts. Of their offerings, the best might be the Dark Peppermint Pleasure Cake. Now that I’ve had the chance to try it, I have to say that Cold Stone Creamery has a winner on their hands.

The Dark Peppermint Pleasure Cake is a combination of cake and their second best Christmas offering the After Dark sundae special. Cold Stone Creamery mixes together red velvet cake, dark chocolate flavored peppermint ice cream, and a rich chocolate gonache. This cake is obviously something special, and well worth its nearly $30 price tag. Anyone who takes this to their next holiday party or gathering is sure to be the center of attention.

There are four layers to this cake, two layers of the ice cream and two layers of the cake. I have to be honest when I say that I’m not a big fan of ice cream cakes in general. It seems like the cake is always frozen and hard, while the ice cream tends to melt too quickly. Cold Stone Creamery somehow manages to get it right with this one.

The red velvet cake tastes a little more like chocolate than most red velvet cakes do, which works well with the other flavors. The dark chocolate peppermint ice cream tastes a little different in the cake than it does on its own. It tastes a little more like chocolate, but the peppermint has a nice subtle flavor in the background. The whole thing is then draped in a rich and silk dark chocolate gonache, which is simply phenomenal once it begins to soften and melt a little. Then they garnish everything in small candy canes and pieces of peppermint candy. Cold Stone Creamery does advertise that there are chocolate pieces in the cake, mixed with the ice cream but my piece had only a few. It didn’t detract from the flavor at all though, it was more of a nice surprise.

The Dark Peppermint Pleasure cake is designed to serve 12-14, but it could easily serve more. The flavor is so rich that many of us had a hard time finishing a single piece.

If you get the chance to try the Dark Peppermint Pleasure cake from Cold Stone Creamery, you won’t be disappointed.