Circus Animal Ice Cream Cake

1. To make the crust:
2. Lightly spray a 9-inch spring form pan with cooking spray and set aside.
3. In a large food processor, crush the circus animal cookies until they make fine crumbs. Two heaping cups of cookies should yield about 2 cups of crumbs.
4. In a large bowl, mix together the cookie crumbs and the melted butter and mix until the crumbs are well coated.
5. Press the crumbs into the bottom of the spring form pan, making sure you pack them in nice and tight. Freeze for 24 hours.
6. To prepare the layers:
7. Thaw 3½ cups of the ice cream until very soft, and spread it over the frozen crust. Pop it back into the freezer until it’s firm.
8. To make the circus animal layer:
9. Process the cookies into crumbs using your food processor.
10. In a large, microwave safe bowl, melt the chocolate at 20 second intervals on a half power setting, stirring between each interval, until smooth.
11. Quickly stir in the heaving whipping cream, oil and the circus animal crumbs. The mixture will turn very thick, almost like a ganache.
12. Pour this over the frozen ice cream layer, spreading quickly to avoid melting the underlying ice cream. Place it back in the freezer until firm and set.
13. For the final layer:
14. In a large bowl, thaw the rest of the ice cream until soft and then mix it with the Cool Whip.
15. Pour this over the chocolate layer, making sure the top is nice and smooth. Refrigerate until completely firm and set, at least 4 hours but overnight is even better.
16. Decorate with more Cool Whip and sprinkles, if desired.
17. Serve!

Notes:
– To serve: let it thaw on the counter for a couple of minutes before slicing, and use a very sharp and very hot knife to cut the slices, reheating the knife with hot water between each slice.
– Make sure and read through the instructions before starting and note that there are several steps where it needs to be frozen; so plan ahead.