Time Travel Kitchen

Icebox Cake for a Hot Summer Day

When it’s too hot to bake, bring on the Icebox Cake!

It only requires three ingredients: whipped cream, a splash of vanilla, and wafer-type cookies of your choice. I went with the classic — Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers.

Thin and crisp, with a dark chocolate color, these sometimes hard-to-find cookies were created in 1924. By 1930, the recipe for icebox cake was on each tin.

In 1927, General Electric had released the ‘Monitor Top’ the first refrigerator that ran on electricity; Frigidaire followed in 1930 with less expensive units that utilized Freon.

Refrigeration in the home was about to change everything in the years that followed.

But recipes for icebox cakes had been around early in the 1920’s, before the Nabisco recipe, and before the first refrigerators. They were named for the place they were stored: the icebox.

If you’d like to make this 1920’s dessert, here are a few notes:

• The cookie/ wafer you choose should be thin. The fat and moisture from the cream softens the crispness of the wafer and makes it like a layer cake—too thick a cookie and it won’t soften enough. Graham crackers work well and are nice with cream and orange sections on top. I really like it with lemon wafers, too, fresh and summery.

• Make stacks of cookies with about a tablespoon of cream between each cookie. I put a layer of cream on the pan I made the cake on to hold the stacks in place while I assembled. The number of cookies you use depends on how wide you want the cake. I had 4 rows and each stack had 9 cookies.

• Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

• Fresh berries are really nice with the cream and the chocolate; I used a mix of raspberries and blackberries.

• The cake may be made in any shape you like; I’ve seen some beautiful circular shapes online that look like flower petals.

• These are fun to make with kids for holidays and celebrations— maybe even this weekend—an extra cake for Father’s Day.

I was thinking this week when the temperatures were around 90 degrees what it must’ve been like for people in the 1920’s and ‘30’s — before air-conditioners and refrigerators were commonplace and they depended on blocks of ice to keep their food fresh.

Standing in my almost century old kitchen, with my air-conditioner on and with a full refrigerator, I felt grateful and lucky.

I hope you have fun making this cake and let me know how it goes!

Have a great weekend!

Jolene

Sources: Nabisco; Mashed; Wikipedia; National Museum of American History. Photo: Jolene