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My husband Jack and I started A Family Feast because of our love of food. We are enthusiastic about sharing great recipes that we’ve made ourselves so that you – our wonderful readers – can enjoy them too!
So every once in a while, we try a new recipe – like this one for Nutella Crunch Ice Cream Cake – that is so delicious and gets us so excited that we rearrange our calendar to share it here as soon as possible!
Three simple ingredients make up this Nutella crunch ice cream cake – Nutella, Rice Krispies cereal, and vanilla ice cream – all combined together into one fantastic, and super easy-to-make dessert! First Rice Krispies are coated with melted Nutella and then cooled before stirring into softened vanilla ice cream. The mixture is packed into a springform pan to form a cake, topped with some more of the coated cereal mixture, and then frozen until ready to serve. (Scroll below to see our video, showing you how easy it is to make this ice cream cake!)
Sounds so simple (it is) – and the results are so, so, so very, very good! The chocolate-hazelnut Nutella and the creamy vanilla ice cream are perfect together, and the crispy, rice cereal lends the perfect light texture to this cake.
This Nutella crunch ice cream cake is a great dessert for feeding a crowd when you want something really delicious without having to go through too much of a fuss to prepare it.
Our Nutella crunch ice cream cake was inspired by this recipe – which we originally spotted on Pinterest. The original version, using melted chocolate and peanut butter instead of the Nutella in our recipe, was cited as an award-winning recipe from the Utica Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Festival, and I can totally understand why! In fact, if you are near Utica, Ohio – the 2013 festival is this coming weekend!
We hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we did! (P.S. Check out our other version of his fantastic dessert using Biscoff!)
We love seeing what you made! Tag us on Instagram at @afamilyfeast or hashtag #afamilyfeast so we can see your creations!
Nutella Crunch Ice Cream Cake
Ingredients
- 2 cups Nutella
- 6 cups Rice Krispies cereal
- 1 gallon vanilla ice cream
Instructions
- Place a 9 or 10 inch springform pan, as well as a very large mixing bowl in the freezer to chill.
- In a large saucepan over low heat, combine the Nutella and Rice Krispies cereal. Mix well until the Rice Krispies are completely coated with the Nutella. Remove from heat.
- Line a sheet pan or cookie sheet with parchment or wax paper. Pour the Nutella-Rice Krispies mixture onto the lined sheet pan and spread evenly. Then place in the freezer to chill.
- While the coated cereal mixture is cooling, remove the ice cream from the freezer and place in the refrigerator to soften.
- After about 30-45 minutes (you want the Nutella coated cereal to be cooled and firm but not frozen at this point) – using a fork and knife – cut the coated cereal into bite sized pieces. Place back into the freezer, if necessary, until the ice cream is softened.
- Once your ice cream is softened (it should be just softened enough to stir in the coated cereal but not so melted that it is runny), remove the Nutella-cereal pieces, the large mixing bowl and the springform pan from the freezer.
- Reserve 2 cups of the Nutella-cereal mixture.
- Quickly combine the ice cream and remaining coated cereal in the chilled mixing bowl, then pour the mixture into the chilled springform pan, packing it firmly so that there are no air pockets. Top the cake with the reserved Nutella-cereal mixture.
- Cover with plastic wrap and place the springform pan back into the freezer for at least 4-6 hours or overnight until completely frozen.
- Remove the cake from the freezer about 30-45 minutes before serving and place in the refrigerator to soften a bit.
- When ready to serve, place the cake on a platter or cake stand and remove the sides of the springform pan. Cut and serve immediately.
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I pinned this way back but have been dying to make it. We celebrate my daughter’s birthday at Thanksgiving and this is what she wanted for her cake. Everyone loved it! The ice cream was an unexpected treat as we celebrated on a snowy Thanksgiving this year. Truly enjoy all your recipes and photos. Thank you.
Thank you so much Maria! We’re glad you all enjoyed it! Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Birthday to your daughter too!
Hi! I would love to try this recipe, but my daughter has some nut sensitivities. Do you think you can substitute plain chocolate syrup for the Nutella?
Hi Becky – You want a chocolate that will firm up a bit when it’s cold – so I’d recommend melting some chocolate chips instead of using a syrup. Hope that helps!
I am going to try that- thanks!
This is really good!!! I don’t have a springform pan, or a big enough family to eat the full recipe, or enough room in my freezer for a huge mixing bowl, cake pan, and cookie sheet. So I did roughly 2/3 recipe and used a 9×9 cake pan lined with heavy duty foil (so I could lift it out for easier slicing.) I used half of a “1gallon+1pint” bucket of ice cream, all of a 13oz jar of Nutella and 4 cups rice crispies. It turned out great! 🙂
We’re glad you enjoyed the recipe Erica! Thanks for writing to us today!
Love this recipie!! Just made it for a friends birthday and it was devoured! I made a small modification by baking a Nutella brownie in the spring pan then your recipie on top. MAGICAL! This is a favorite.
Sounds like a delicious variation Anne! Thanks for sharing!
Can you use a 9 x 13 pan instead of a springform pan? Good dessert, but don’t have one of those pans!
Hi Todd – Yes you can – the springform makes it easier to serve (plus you can see the side of the cake) but any pan or pie dish will work!
Hi there, what a great site you’ve created for us!! My husband’s birthday party is this weekend with our children and grandchildren and am so looking forward to sharing this with them as I make it for the first time. Crunchy and sweet, has to be yummy! Thanks much:)
Thanks Delores – We hope you all enjoy the cake!
Hi Dolores – You can find Biscoff at the supermarket usually in the same section as Nutella, or sometimes peanut butter. Hope that helps!
Hi! I tried this recipe out yesterday for a family get together. I had the kids in mind when i made this n it was a complete success….but what i did not expect were all the sweet starved adults go completely crazy over it! Everyone broke their diets n their calorie counts….my uncle took an extra shot of insulin so he cud hav a ‘little” bit more! It was yummy n sweet n crunchy n creamy n everything in between…! Its amazing how the littlest of effort, time n ingredients can make a show stealer like this! Kudos for comin up with it!! N thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much for writing to us Mary! We’re glad you ALL enjoyed this recipe as much as we do ourselves!
This was amazing. And simple. Simply amazing. That is all.
LOL – Thank you so much Lindy! (We totally agree…) Thank you for taking the time to write to us!
Hi!
I wanted to make this dessert for my summer party tomorow night. What is 1 gallon of ice cream? Is a jar of 2 L enough?
I’m from Canada so I’m not very used to gallons..
Thanks!
Hi Charlotte – I just used an online conversion calculator and 1 gallon of ice cream = 3.7851 liters. If you use 2 liters, I would cut back a bit on the nutella and rice krispie mixture. Hope that helps!
My hubby just made this for my birthday. While the flavors are definitely good together, there is no way 1 gallon of ice cream will fit in a standard 9inch springform. He only ended up being able to use a standard 1/2 gallon of ice cream and then quickly realized that 4 cups of nutella coated krispies was going to be way too much, but not until after he had mixed it in. So it ended up being one giant soggy nutella coated rice krispie treat. I will def try again, but with 1/2 gallon of ice cream and maybe only 1-2 cups of rice krispies.
We’re sorry you had so much trouble with the recipe Lacey! Keeping both the mixing bowls and the springform pan very cold while you mix up the ice cream, and not allowing the ice cream to soften too much is definitely the key to avoiding a melted soggy mess with this recipe! I will share that the first time I made this recipe, I too thought that a gallon was way too much ice cream so I started with a 1/2 gallon. The ice cream melted on me the first time around – and it only filled the springform halfway. Our recipe as written is what worked best for us, but it does make a very large cake – so feel free to adjust as you need to. Thanks again for your feedback!!