mulberryshoots

Do you remember the chocolate wafer/whipped cream ice box dessert that your family might have enjoyed in the 50’s or 60’s? I’ve made it recently and it’s always a big hit – never mind that it’s so easy to put together with no baking required. This morning, I read an article in the Sunday Telegram and Gazette syndicated from the Washington Post containing new ideas for making ice box cakes. Suggestions for using alternative “cake” fillings got me looking at other crispy cookies at the grocery store. “Tate” cookies from Long Island were on sale, 2/$5.00 and I brought home two bags of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. I had wanted something toasty almondy but this sounded good too.

Because this ice-box cake idea relies on chilling the cake for 6-8 hours before serving, I took out my mixer when I got home and whipped up a pint of heavy whipping cream and started to put the dessert together. I wasn’t altogether sure about what kind of container to use, and I ended up using a smallish glass loaf baking pan.

To begin, I spread the whipped cream over the bottom and up the sides of the glass loaf pan. Then, I lay the cookies out to cover a layer, breaking some up to fill in the bare spots. A layer of whipped cream went on top, then more cookie layers. We usually like our whipped cream without other flavors like sugar or vanilla – so it’s just plain whipped cream for our dessert. I was careful to lay the whole cookies in different places for each layer so that the weight distribution would be shared over the dessert layers. Two packs of cookies left me with about 5 layers of dessert and three cookies left over.

To store it in the fridge, I put toothpicks in the four corners and gently laid plastic wrap over the whole thing, securing it to the outside of the glass dish. It’s just before noon now, so it’ll have about 7 hours before we take it out and serve it. I’ll be curious about how it will be to serve this out of the glass loaf pan, but we’ll figure that out later, I guess.

Will post photos of the cake when we serve it tonight.