What’s not to love about icebox cakes?
They’re so easy: You just layer chocolate or other cookie wafers and flavorings between loads of whipped cream.
And they’re so good: Cookies soaked in whipped cream!
I used to make a fabulous chocolate-raspberry sort of icebox pie using Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers – the icebox-cake standard – and this great German raspberry sauce I used to be able to find.
But I hadn’t made one in years and hadn’t thought about it until I met the new cookbook: “Icebox Cakes: Recipes for the Coolest Cakes in Town.” And I was instantly hungry for one.
The book, by “icebox cake obsessive” Jean Sagendorph (a literary and licensing agent) and Jessie Sheehan (“a recipe developer with a sweet spot for whipped cream and pudding”), is very straightforward. After a single page on the dessert’s origins (starting with French charlottes and popularized starting in the 1920s by the recipe on the package of National Biscuit Co. Famous Chocolate Wafers) and a few words about tools and techniques, the book gets straight to recipes. Several sounded great to me (from an adaptation of the Nabisco original to Mexican Chocolate Spice), but, inspired by Thin Mints season, I decided to try the Peppermint-Chocolate – as an Easter dessert for my extended family. It was pretty and delicious and fed a crowd and I can’t wait to make it again.