I ordered ice-cream cakes from Dairy Queen, Baskin-Robbins, and Cold Stone Creamery. The best dominated in all but one category.

• To find the best ice-cream cake, I visited Cold Stone Creamery, Dairy Queen, and Baskin-Robbins.
• Dairy Queen's cake was solid, but the one I got at Baskin-Robbins felt like a better value.
• Cold Stone Creamery's was the priciest, but it was the best for flavor and customization.

No celebration is complete without cake. But like many, I've grown tired of dry layers and waxy frosting. It wasn't until recently that I remembered ice-cream cake exists.

I hadn't eaten ice-cream cake for years, let alone ordered one online, but a quick search showed that the Dairy Queen, Cold Stone Creamery, and Baskin-Robbins of my childhood were still popular.

In a quest to discover the best, I customized a similar ice-cream cake at all three chains. To keep the playing field level, I requested the smallest-size celebration cake with "Happy Birthday" in blue letters.

The flavors and layers were based on my first stop, Dairy Queen, since it offered few customization options. I used its standard DQ Cakes Celebration Cake as the baseline.

Here's how the chains measured up.

Dairy Queen's "custom" cakes didn't feel all that custom to me.

My local Dairy Queen offered two types of ice-cream cake: DQ Cakes and DQ Blizzard Cakes, both with preset fillings.

For both, I'd be selecting a preset cake in terms of flavor and theme, but I could customize my message and choose its color.

All of the DQ Cakes consisted of chocolate soft serve on the bottom, fudge and chocolate crunchy bits in the middle, and vanilla soft serve on top, finished with white topping.

Some had colorful icing borders or designs featuring licensed characters, such as Disney princesses, but most were quite simple.

I selected the DQ Cakes Celebration Cake, which was finished with a white piped border and rainbow sprinkles.

The smallest available size was an 8-inch round, listed as serving eight to 10 people on the website.

My Cold Stone Creamery cake truly felt made-to-order.

Practically every element of this dessert was customizable, including the ice-cream flavor, cake type, middle layer, frosting, and toppings. I could even configure the side "crumbing" and add up to three free mix-ins.

With over a dozen ice-cream flavors, five middle-layer options, 10 frostings, and even more mix-ins, I was convinced anyone could create their dream combination.

The sky felt like the limit — until I tried ordering an ice-cream-only cake. That wasn't an option, as the chain required I choose yellow, red velvet, or devil's food cake.

To best mirror my Dairy Queen order, I picked devil's food chocolate cake as the base and French vanilla as the ice cream flavor. To try matching the middle, I selected Oreo cookies and hot fudge as mix-ins, plus hot fudge as a layer.

Finally, I added white frosting and rainbow sprinkles.

The smallest cake I could order was a 6-inch round, enough for up to eight partygoers, according to the website.

Baskin-Robbins' fudge-crunch filling cake gave me Dairy Queen déjà vu.

My local Baskin-Robbins had dozens of designs, but two main options for custom ice-cream cakes: one with ice cream and real cake, and another with ice cream and fudge-crunch filling.

For the former, I could choose one type of cake (from three options) and one ice cream flavor (from 35 options).

The latter was described as "two layers of rich ice cream, surrounding a layer of fudge and chocolate crunchies." I couldn't customize the ice-cream flavors, though: one was vanilla and the other was chocolate.

I ended up ordering the Baskin-Robbins' Celebration Party Cake with a fudge-crunch center, which seemed most similar to what I got at Dairy Queen.

The smallest size was a 4-by-8-inch rectangle; however, my store ran out of sheet cake. Unless I wanted to wait a week, a 9-inch round was the next smallest option, enough for 12 to 16 people, per the site.

Dairy Queen's cake was cute and classic.

None of the cakes were overly fancy, but Dairy Queen's cake appeared exceptionally clean, festive, and easy to read. I liked the whipped embellishments and vibrant sprinkles.

To me, $34.99 for an 8-inch cake felt like a solid deal.

Cold Stone Creamery's cake wasn't the widest, but it was the tallest.

Although small in diameter, Cold Stone's cake was stacked high with several thick layers.

Style-wise, it was the simplest of the three. The letters looked a little cramped, but I chalked it up to the 6-inch size being harder to decorate. I still found it festive.

Nonetheless, the $36.99 price tag hurt, given that the cake was technically 2 inches smaller than Dairy Queen's and 3 inches smaller than Baskin-Robbins'.

The Baskin-Robbins cake looked nothing like the photo.

Based on the photos in the online ordering menu, I expected rainbow sprinkles and bright, vivid colors. The cake didn't have either. I could accept the darker hues, but I really missed the sprinkles.

That said, the intricately piped frosting and sophisticated garnishes made up for it. And $35.99 for a 9-inch cake felt like a steal compared to the price at my previous stop.

I liked the Dairy Queen cake, but it didn't feel too special.

With smooth soft-serve and equal parts chocolate and vanilla flavors, Dairy Queen's cake checked some boxes. The whipped "frosting" added a light and fluffy finish.

I felt like I didn't get enough chocolate crunchies, though. And aside from a few globs pooled at the edges, the fudge was practically nonexistent.

To its credit, the cake's crunchy chocolate pieces had a deep, full-bodied flavor — better than Oreos, in my opinion. I just wish there were more, especially since the fudge-and-crunch center was the cake's claim to fame.

With only a thin middle layer and no actual cake, it felt like eating chocolate and vanilla soft serve in cake form.

Cold Stone Creamery's cake had a perfect mix of textures.

Cold Stone's towering dessert was the only cake that I thought truly earned its "custom" title.

In addition to the lettering, it had everything I selected: the cookie bits, hot-fudge swirls, and white frosting, plus my chosen cake and ice-cream flavors.

I enjoyed the crunch of the cookies, the sponginess of the cake, and the silkiness of the super-creamy ice cream. Better yet, the cake remained firm, not hard, and bouncy.

Disappointment came in the form of hot fudge (or lack thereof). Until I looked closely and saw a thin line, I assumed the chain had forgotten to add it. However, since the vanilla ice cream contained hot fudge, I let the miniscule layer slide.

The Baskin-Robbins cake tasted exceptionally chocolaty.

At first glance, the inside of Baskin-Robbins' ice-cream cake appeared identical to Dairy Queen's. Different from Dairy Queen, however, Baskin-Robbins went heavy on the fudge and extra-light on the crunch.

The fudge formed a thick, almost chocolate-bar-like layer over the ice cream, giving the cake a nice balance of softness and structure.

Crunchy chocolate cookies would have been a welcome addition, though honestly, the cake didn't need much more chocolate.

Vanilla paled in the background, even with disproportionately more vanilla ice cream than chocolate. As a chocoholic, I enjoyed the intense flavor, but it wouldn't be for everyone.

Price-wise, Baskin-Robbins' cake felt like the best deal.

All of these felt pricey compared to a regular sheet cake, but generally worth it for such a crowd-pleasing dessert.

My custom ice-cream cake cost $4.37 per inch at Dairy Queen, $6.17 per inch at Cold Stone Creamery, and $4 per inch at Baskin-Robbins.

If I were to assume I can get the maximum number of servings from each cake based on the chain's provided estimates, Baskin-Robbins is also the best value at $2.25 per serving, compared to $3.50 at Dairy Queen and $4.62 at Cold Stone Creamery.

All things considered, I'd take the estimated servings with a grain of salt, especially since they are a bit vague and vary quite a bit among chains.

For example, Cold Stone Creamery says its 8-inch round serves up to 14, and Dairy Queen says its 8-inch round serves eight to 10. This is likely because the former's cake is much taller with more layers.

For an ice-cream-only cake, I'd choose Baskin-Robbins …

Baskin-Robbins' cake didn't look quite how I'd hoped it would, but it was a solid pick that offered a great value.

The rich, flavorful ice cream felt more substantial than Dairy Queen's soft serve, which mattered when the entire cake was made of it.

Although I wished for more cookie bits, the fudge made up for it. And if I were in a time crunch, Baskin-Robbins had plenty of premade options, too.

… but between the three chains, Cold Stone Creamery stole the show.

It may have been the priciest per inch, but if I'm paying at least $35 for a custom ice-cream cake, I'd rather spend on something unique and made-to-order.

The Cold Stone Creamery dessert had actual cake, the most velvety ice cream, and endless customizable features, including more than 35 mix-in options and a dozen ice-cream flavors.

Above all else, this chain's ice cream tasted the best, in my opinion.

And, although I was skeptical at first, the springy devil's food cake made this dessert feel complete.

Plus, it could reasonably be left out for a bit if needed, thanks to the substantial bottom layer. I couldn't say the same about the Dairy Queen or Baskin-Robbins cakes, which began melting the minute they hit the plate.

Practicality-wise, the small size option was another perk. Because of its impressive height, the 6-inch cake felt like more than enough for a typical group of eight or so.

All of the chains had tasty cakes, but for a truly personalized experience and a chocolate-fudge-crunch-vanilla situation done right, I'd pick Cold Stone every time. I can forgive the price tag.

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