Icebox cake, refrigerator cake – or as we inexplicably call it, freezer cake – was a special occasion staple in my house. Delicious cultural artifact and a symbol of post-modern cookery in which convenience rules, the hardest part about making a Freezer Cake is finding the cookies: Only Famous Chocolate Wafers will do. Crispy, thin and not too sweet, Famous Chocolate Wafers have been around since 1924, according to Nabisco’s archives. Uneeda Bakers, a long-ago division of the National Biscuit Company (a.k.a. Nabisco), concocted the icebox cake recipe as a way to promote their simple chocolate wafers, promoted as festive party fare, easy to make and pretty to present. The old-fashioned wafers are not a big seller anymore, and many supermarkets have stopped carrying them. I’ve had to search high and low for the necessary wafers (search high–they’re almost always on the top shelf at the grocery store, often nowhere near the cookie aisle).
The icebox cake descends from 19th century ice cream bombes which descended from Charlotte Russe – that cool lady-finger-cradled Bavarian cream created by 19th-century French celebrity chef Marie-Antoine Carême – which descended from Renaissance-era Trifles. But for us, the Icebox Cake is that slap-it-together 20th-century combo of cookies and whipped cream that was popular up through the 50’s and 60’s. We kept the tradition going long after that in my family.
This is how my mom would make it: First, she’d whip the cream, making sure it wasn’t TOO sweet. Then, she’d smear the whipped cream on each cookie, standing them on edge like a row of dominoes, on wax paper on a serving tray. Then she’d slather the rest of the cream over the cookies to form a white log and put it the refrigerator for several hours (sometimes overnight). Assembled and placed in the “icebox”, the flavors fused together while the cake chilled and set, the cream absorbing into the wafers and softening them to create a cakey log. The recipe calls for chocolate shavings on top, but my mom would use maraschino cherries for that festive feel. Then she’d slice it on the diagonal, revealing it’s zebra-stripe layers. It seemed like magic. Still does. It’s so impressive, no one will ever know it’s not really a cake at all. Unlike a traditional cake, an Icebox Cake cake is best served refreshingly cold. You can slap it together and in a few hours have a CAKE, without so much as turning on the oven!
My brother’s kids love this cake as much as we did and my mom makes it for them, the same way, sans oven. The directions and accompanying photo are right on the box:
Ingredients:
1 tsp. vanilla
1 pt. (2 cups) whipping cream, whipped
1 pkg. (9 oz.) FAMOUS Chocolate Wafers
Preparation:
ADD vanilla to whipped cream; stir gently until well blended.
SPREAD 1-1/2 tsp. of the whipped cream mixture onto each wafer. Stack wafers together, then stand on edge on serving platter to make a log.
Frost with the remaining whipped cream mixture.
REFRIGERATE at least 4 hours or overnight. Cut dessert diagonally into 14 slices to serve.
Store leftover dessert in refrigerator.
The fabulous Lark Bakery in Silver Lake makes a traditionally round, layered icebox cake – which I recently bought for my nephew’s birthday cake – and icebox cupcakes.