I’ve seen quite a few videos of people making ice box cakes. I wanted to join in.
I had never seen an ice box cake until I started seeing videos of it recently….I’ve still not seen it in real life to be honest, just on TikTok and Instagram.
Anyway, every single one I have seen looks so good, so here is my version of an ice box cake!
Video Tutorial
What is an ice box cake?
The first time I heard about ice box cakes, I just assumed it was a different kind of ice cream cake because I heard the words ‘ice’ and ‘cake’.
Turns out I was very wrong. There is no ice involved in ice box cakes….there’s not even any cake involved.
An ice box cake is essentially layers of some kind of biscuit and then a sweetened whipped cream.
Whiles this cake chills in the fridge, the biscuits softens. It ends up tasting like there are layers of cake within this. You’re essentially making something that tastes like a cake without having to turn your oven on.
These cakes are so easy to put together and the taste is also amazing!
The blueberry jam
The first thing you are going to do when making this is make a blueberry ‘jam’.
I don’t know if it can be considered a jam, or maybe a compote. In my videos I’ve always just called it blueberry juice, but I feel like over here I need to seem a little more professional. So we’re going with jam instead.
Anyway I digress, this jam is going to be added into the whipped cream in order to make it blueberry flavoured.
To make it, all you are doing is cooking some blueberries with just a little bit of sugar and also water. Then you’re adding corn flour to thicken it.
You want to make this first so that it can cool down completely before you add it to your whipped cream.
If you want to make things easier, you can just buy some blueberry jam and mix this into your whipped cream. If you do this though I recommend trying to find a unsweetened jam. You don’t want to be adding too much extra sugar to the whipped cream.
Ingredients for the whipped cream
Making the whipped cream is pretty simple, all you are really doing is whipping all the ingredients together.
Here are the ingredients you are going to need for it:
- Double cream – if you’re American, this is the same as heavy cream. If you live in a place where this isn’t available, whipping cream will work too.
- Condensed milk – some recipes for ice box cakes use icing sugar to sweeten the cream, some use condensed milk. I prefer condensed milk, it gives you a smoother, creamier whipped cream.
- Vanilla – just for flavour.
- The blueberry jam – once this is cooled, mix it into your cream. I added all of it, you don’t have too. It just depends on how much blueberry flavour you want the cream to have. Also if you are buying the jam, I don’t have a measurement for how much you should add to the cream, just add it taste!
The biscuits
For this I used malted milk biscuits. From what I’ve seen, Ice box cakes are typically made with graham crackers. We don’t have those in the UK, but malted milk biscuits work great!
Any biscuits or cookies will work though, use your favourite.
I just recommend using one that isn’t too thick. You want it too soften in the fridge, so that the texture ends up like cake. If you use a biscuit that is too thick, it won’t soften as well.
Assembling
In the recipe I wrote that you should use an 8 inch cake tin. I’ve said this because that’s the size cake tin I used.
But honestly you can use any size, it doesn’t even have to be a cake tin. A pyrex dish, a pie dish, a….ok I’ve ran out of things. All I’m saying is, this isn’t being baked so you can use anything.
You just might not have the same amount of layers, or you might need to use more or maybe less biscuits!
Taking the ice box cake out of the tin
When assembling this cake, I assembled it inside of a loose bottomed tin. I did this so that I could take it out of the tin and get perfect slices.
This was all for aesthetic purpose.
This kind of cake isn’t one that you need to take out of the tin. It’s one where you just cut it into slices whiles it’s inside the tin or whatever you made it in. Then you just scoop the slices out. It’s treated the way you would treat a tiramisu or a tres leches cake.
Again I took it out of the tin, so that I could get nicer slices for my video but you really don’t have to do this!
Looking for actual cake recipes? Take a look at some of these:
Blueberry
Ice Box Cake
Ingredients
- For the blueberry jam:
400g blueberries
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon corn flour mixed with 1 tablespoon water
- For the whipped cream:
600ml double cream
250g condensed milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- For the cake part:
Around 60 malted milk biscuits
150ml milk
Directions
- Making the blueberry jam:
- In a pot, add your blueberries, water and sugar. Mix these together then place this pot over medium heat.
- Whiles this is cooking, use a spatula or spoon to mash the blueberries.
- Once most of the blueberries are mashed, add in the corn flour/water mixture. Mix this in then cook the mixture, whiles stirring, until it thickens. This won't take long, it should take about a minute.
- At this point, I like to push this through a sieve to make it smoother, if you don't mind lumps of blueberries, you can skip this.
- Leave this in the fridge, or the freezer to speed up the process, until it has cooled completely.
- Making the whipped cream:
- In a large bowl, whip the double cream until it goes bubbly. Then add in the condensed milk and vanilla, whip until the mixture is thick.
- Now mix in the cooled blueberry jam.
- Assembling:
- Start by lining an 8 inch square cake tin with some baking paper.
- To assemble the cake, get 1 biscuit, soak it in the milk for a few seconds then add it into your tin. Repeat this until you have a full layer of biscuits.
- Add some of the whipped cream on top of this, smooth it out, then add another layer of the biscuits. Keep repeating this until you have used all the biscuits and cream. In total I had 4 layers of the biscuit and 4 layers of cream.
- Cover this and leave in the fridge to give the biscuits time to soften. Leave it in there for at least 4 hours, overnight is much better though.
- The next day, cut it into slices and then enjoy!
