The Fascinating Way Dairy Queen Makes Their Ice Cream Cakes In-Store

There are a number of spots you can go for ice cream treats. Carvel, Friendly's, Wendy's, and of course, your local ice cream shop, to name a few. But Dairy Queen is one of the most popular ice cream chains, and the perfect place to go when you're craving a sweet treat on a warm summer day, or year-round, if your dedication to ice cream can beat the cold! The chain serves up soft serve ice cream, sundaes, Blizzards, Dilly Bars, and more.

If you need a sweet treat to serve a crowd, Dairy Queen offers a few options on its menu. Its cakes can be made standard with chocolate and vanilla soft serve ice creams, separated by a layer of fudgy, cookie crumbles. The chain also sells DQ Blizzard Cakes, and customers can choose from a variety of sweet ice cream blends to act as the cake's top layer.

If you've ever been curious about what goes into the process of making a Dairy Queen cake, one employee took to social media to show off exactly what she does.

A YouTube video reveals the cake making process

In a video posted to YouTube, Morgann Book details how Dairy Queen produces its ice cream cakes. Book is an employee of Dairy Queen, and her YouTube channel features an entire playlist of Dairy Queen-related content. In the video, Book is seen making a Turtle-Pecan Blizzard Cake. She begins by filling the sides of the frozen cake mold with vanilla soft serve ice cream and then uses a spatula to press the ice cream into a bowl shape.

Book adds a bottom layer of vanilla soft serve to the cake, then drizzles some caramel sauce over it. She explains that most cakes have a chocolate fudge cookie center, but this specific cake swaps in caramel turtles (caramel-covered chocolates) and pecans. The cake is then placed in the freezer while she makes the Blizzard for the top layer. She blends vanilla soft serve, caramel sauce, pecans, and caramel turtles in a cup. Once blended, she adds the Blizzard mix to the top layer of the ice cream cake and smooths it out with a spatula.

After the cake is assembled, it's placed back in the freezer to solidify before being decorated.

There are a few ways to decorate a cake

Over on Morgann Book's YouTube channel, you will find a playlist packed full of Dairy Queen-related videos. Book shares in one of the videos that she typically preps the ice cream cakes the day before the order is due, then decorates the cakes first thing in the morning on pickup days.

Book says there are a few different ways to decorate a cake. Some cakes use edible marshmallow image sheets, so she pipes frosting borders around the edge of the image, as well as the top and bottom edges of the cake. She also uses chocolate drips around some cakes and decorates others with toppings like chocolate turtles or Oreos. With other, more complex orders, employees will freehand decorate cakes with different colored icings.

Though Book hasn't posted a Dairy Queen-related video on her YouTube channel since June 2022, she still posts frequently over on her TikTok account, where her description says she is "probably decorating cakes or reading."