ICEBOX CAKE
SPRING HAS SPRUNG INTO CAKE……A CHOCOLATE WAFER ICEBOX CAKE TO BE EXACT
April showers bring May flowers is but a fairytale in this neck of the woods. This year however has been spectacularly peculiar. The rain just hasn’t stopped. We have walked into spring a saturated world of green grass and mud…..tiny rivers running through it all that just keep flowing….waterfalls cascading off normally arid hill sides…it is a sight to be seen……and flowers so pretty to boot!
My daughter was born in the spring….two days after the equinox…a spring baby. Her birthday cakes are usually some sort of disaster I cover in flowers. She is a picky eater so the day she discovered she liked the chocolate wafer cake I felt like I had hit the jackpot. Finally a cake she would eat!
This cake, also called the classic icebox cake, was a yearly cake my grandmother would make my father for his birthday. Tradition was a yellow store bought box of chocolate wafers layered together with whip cream and chilled overnight in the fridge. The shape was often a sort of log looking cake without too much character or with a small amount of ambition, you could make it into a full circular ring. My mother continued making this cake for my father every year that I can remember. The tradition has now passed down to my daughter. Fitting as both my daughter and my father are named Frances/Francis and born Aries in the springtime.
This year I have upped the anti and decided to scratch the store bought wafers and make them at home. Yesterday my sister told me she can’t find the chocolate wafer cookies in the markets in her neck of the woods down under so to all of those that don’t have the convenience of super market wafer sweeps this recipe might be a game changer. Now you too can experience the chilled moist black and white miracle that is the springtime IceBox Cake!
Construction of the cake is the same and the fundamental truly fabulous character of the cake stays intact…..the overnight chill for a chocolate cookie wafer that soaks in the moisture of the sugar whipped cream and sets into a soft delicious chocolate cake by the morning.
My search for a chocolate wafer recipe led me to a version by Zoe Francois’, also know as Zoe Bakes. I doubled the recipe because that’s what I do…..I make big batches, but you can easily run this recipe I am posting by half for one loaf sized cake instead of two. I also accidentally doubled the butter but they tasted so good I’m sticking to it! It all turned out fine!
PART 2:
WHIPPING CREAM AND MAKING CAKE
For the Whip Cream:
3 cup heavy cream
Sugar to taste
Dash vanilla
ICEBOX CAKE IN THREE SHORT VIDEO TUTORIALS
PART 1:
CHOCOLATE WAFER RECIPE
Ingredients
For the Chocolate Wafers:
2 cups butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup milk
PART 3
FLOWER FORAGING AND CAKE DESIGN
Some additional points:
You can construct this cake however you’d like. I am attempting the loaf pan style that Zoe suggests because it is new and interesting but you can just as easily free form the shape as long as you layer the wafers and whip cream together and cover the cake with whipped cream at the end.
You may have to make additional whip cream the next day for the final layer…a beautifying process….which you can then embellish any way you’d like!
