Icebox cake

This is an Icebox Cake – a popular American dessert from the time of the First World War that enjoyed wide success due to the fact that it is put together using pre-made ingredients that are easily available.

I wanted to share this curious concoction with you to see what you make of it. Anna from the Good Food Channel website made it for our recent Easter photoshoot and I have to say I was a little dubious.

As you can clearly see it’s layers of chocolate digestives and whipped sweetened cream. Nothing more, nothing less. Very simple to construct and very decadent looking. But what would it taste like?

Anna said when she’d tried it out on the office it was a very Marmite response – people either loved it or hated it. But those that loved it REALLY enthused.

Once you’ve put it together you put it in the fridge overnight. The biscuits soften but not in an unpleasant sludgy dunked for too long in your tea type of way. They just become a little more, well, yes, cakey!

Here’s what it looked like once it had been cut into. I love the layers and have to say we all really enjoyed eating it. A pleasant amount of crunch from the biscuits on the outside coupled with the cakier texture on the inside. There’s a lot of cream in there though, so there’s a limit to how much you can eat!

It’s a bit of a novelty, and i’m not sure it’s going to be a crowd pleaser, but if you’ve got a packet of biscuits, a large tub of double cream and some sugar then you’ve got yourself a no-bake cake. You could also experiment with different kinds of biscuits and flavours for the cream. You could scale it down and do mini versions in dessert glasses as a make-ahead dessert.

Get the recipe here>>

Would you try making it? Let me know what you think!