The glory and history of an icebox cake.
- Mar 11, 2015
- 3 min read
A lot of you probably don't even know what the hell an icebox is, let alone an icebox cake.
This is where I come in. Anything that has to do with food, inparticular, history of food, always peaks my interests. So in the true fashion of me, being me, I figure if it interests me, it must interest a lot of people.
I was just recently introduced into the wonderful world of icebox cakes and now every time I make one, it makes me wonder how this all got started. It's 3 ingredients, heavy cream, a little sugar and some chocolate cookies that claim themselves to be famous.
Here's a link to check out various recipes dedicated to these famous wafers
Like I said before, this "cake" is 3 ingredients. Lightly sweetened heavy cream and the afore mentioned cookies.
In the reading I have done, this cake was a huge hit back when our fancy modern day refridgeraters were called icebox's because thats exactly what they use to be. A big fridge looking thingy that had a huge container to hold the ice in it, keeping the food from spoiling. Before electricity guys.
The heavy cream is whipped up to stiff peaks and put together with the cookies and left in the icebox to chill overnight. The cookies and heavy cream blend into one pretty damn awesome tasting confection that started the entire cookies and cream craze along with the oreo. The famous wafers are actually the oreo before it was the oreo. When I tried one for the first time, I have to admit, it was wild to taste an oreo that didn't look like what we all know oreos to resemble.
The taste and the look of this cake really is like eating a freshly made oreo.
Which is now something I am going to have to do in this life time. Can you just imagine the wonderful wonderful world of a fresh off the line oreo? Priorities people....
Since I have started making these cakes, it's very clear that everyone has their opinion as to just how these things should look. Unless they agree with me, they are wrong.
I think its an insult to this great cake, if the cream is overwhipped to the point that it's one step away from being butter...
I feel that it's best that the heavy cream be lightly sweetened with sugar and vanilla extract and whipped just to soft-medium peaks. Once you go past stiff peaks (which is also my stage name) and you start to build your cake, you are still in essence, whipping that cream as you go and the end result really looks repulsive.
To start, you spread about 1/3 cup of the whipped cream on a cake plate in the shape of a circle,
Like this;
Then place one of the cookies right in the middle of the whipped cream circle and 7 cookies directly around in a circle around that middle cookie.
Like this;
See how that one in the middle broke? No one needs to worry, this is cookies and cream people.
Scoop some more whipped cream, again, about 1/3 of a cup, directly ontop of those cookies spread the cream around just to the edges of the cookies, so it looks as if they are peaking out from the whipped cream.
Like this;
Place one of the cookies right in the middle and again, 7 more cookies around that cookie, but placing them slighty askew of the first layer. Do this till you have 10 layers of cookies.
For the top layer, be a bit more generous with the whipped cream. Let sit in the fridge over night.
Like this;
See how the whipped cream is just slightly oozing inbetween the cookies? Yeah, that's the correct way this "cake" should look. Anyone says any differently they are wrong and probably have really bad breath.
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