Daring Bakers make Joconde Imprime

This month's daring bakers challenge was hosted by Astheroshe over at Accro. She challenged the daring bakers to make Joconde imprime.

Here's a little info about what a Joconde imprime is:

 A joconde imprime (French Baking term) is a decorative design baked into a light sponge cake providing an elegant finish to desserts/torts/entremets/ formed in ring molds. A joconde batter is used because it bakes into a moist, flexible cake. The cake batter may be tinted or marbleized for a further decorative effect.

The joconde imprime is then cut in to strips and shaped in a ring mold. It is filled with pastry cream or various other fillings, and served. Astheroshe says to imagine it as a trifle but in a mold made out of cake.

It was quite fun to make a pretty design. I made a checkerboard type with pink tinted batter and the sponge. Instead of filling mine with pastry cream and such, I chose to fill it with ice cream! I used french vanilla ice cream (because who doesn't love the look on vanilla beans?!) and to add a little crunch, I crushed up some cereal to layer in between the ice cream. The cereal absorbed the moisture from the ice cream causing slightly gummy and chewy cereal, so that's a tip I learned: Never put cereal in your ice cream cake! I had left over joconde imprime, so I just ate it by itself. I found I liked it better slightly heated, rather than frozen in the cake.

Overall it was really quite fun, and I hope to make it again. But next time with pastry cream!