Chocolate cookies

Icebox cakes are a delightfully 20th century throwbac

They are not baked

They're usually just prepackaged cookies or wafers covered in whipped cream and then left in the fridge overnight. The whole mass kinda melts together into something you could call a cake. This particular zebra cake is the archetypal icebox cake in my mind. And it's traditionally made with prepackaged wafers, but I'm going to make my own because. I want a texture that's more solid and less baby-food-like than the original. To that end. I'm also using a secret ingredient in the whipped cream that makes it stiffer — more substantial.

First the chocolate. A stick of butter, 113g. I'm just melting that in the microwave. I'm not gonna bother getting it soft and creaming it. I want a dense, chewy texture. A cup and a quarter, 250g of brown sugar. Or white sugar with a glug of molasses because that's all brown sugar is. A little glug of vanilla.

A big glug of milk to help the cookies spread and get crispy. A small pinch of salt. If I was using unsalted butter I would use a large pinch. And a dash of baking powder. And I would guess three quarters of a cup of cocoa powder at least. At least 75g. Most of the mass of the cake is going to be whipped cream, so this is where the flavor comes from. Lots of chocolate — Dutch cocoa, for that Oreo flavor.

Beat the lumps out of that. And now if I just put in flour and baked these I would have chocolate wafers, which are the traditional thing. Instead I'm putting in one egg, which will push this more into cookie territory. Egg will keep the cookie from fully dissolving inside the whipped cream, the wafers do. I want some texture in the final product. A cup of flour, 120g. Also in the name of texture, I'm putting in a cup of chocolate chips. Mini chips, so they're not too big and crunchy when cold.

But they'll be small and crunchy when cold. Again, I'm trying to get away from that totally soft, baby food vibe of traditional icebox cake. Ok, you could just bake this in dollops like any cookie, or you could grab some parchment or plastic wrap, dump everything out, roughly shape it into a log and then throw it in the fridge or the freezer.

When it's gotten hard enough to hold

It's shape you can really shape it into a perfect log.

Chill it one more time until quite firm, and then you can take a knife and slice off perfect rounds like that, about yay wide. Cut it up fast before it warms up and gets too soft or tries to talk to a whale. This method will get us cookies of uniform size and shape that will stack on top of either other really cleanly, if you care. Three trays worth in the oven at 350ºF, 180ºC.

They'll take 10 or 12 minutes, just bake them until they look done. They don't have to be perfect because they're gonna be soaked in cream. They do have to cool all the way down. Might as well chill for a moment on my sofa from Allform, the sponsor of this video. A year of children and now dogs have done nothing to diminish the look of this sofa. That's why I like leather – it just gets nicer the more you abuse it. But Allform has fabric options too. Allform is all about options.

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Ok, we're going to need a stupid amount of whipped cream for this. Icebox cake is mostly whipped cream. I've got three pints of cream, which is almost one-and-a-half liters. And the secret ingredient to give it depth of flavor and a more substantial texture is malted milk powder, my best friend in dessert making. You could just use regular milk powder if you don't want that malted grain flavor, but I think it's delicious.

Extra milk protein from powder is often

Used by bakers to thicken whipped cream and to make it more stable, less likely to deflate in the fridge over time.

I'd do at least a tablespoon per

Cup of cream, so i've got, what, six or eight tablespoons in there? maybe 80g total.

That's a drink mix so it has some sugar, but we'll need more.

This is a ton of cream and it's not going to be sweetened by a bunch of other elements in the cake. So a half a cup of granulated sugar, 100g. A glug of vanilla and then it's time to beat. Adding sugar and powders to cream before you whip it definitely slows down the whipping process. But it also does a much before job of getting everything dissolved and dispersed. That's particularly important for the milk powder, which tends to clump. If you're whipping with a power tool, I say just add the stuff up front and wait a couple extra minutes. It'll seem like nothing is working until, boom, whipped cream.

Give it a taste and add sugar if you think it needs it. It should taste like a finished dessert all on its own. The cookies have fully cooled. I can reuse this parchment and build my cakes on it. I'm doing several smaller cakes instead of one big one, just so I can show you some different ways of doing it. Onto the base of cream goes a cookie, then more cream, then another cookie and I'll just build my stack. You could make an individual portion this way or this is more like a cake for two. Smooth it off — you might have an easier time getting the sides smooth after this chills, if you care.

You can do that with whipped cream, unlike other frostings that set up too hard in the fridge. Alright, here's the traditional "fancy" way of building this — an upright log. Grab two or three cookies and put cream between them. Together they're wide enough that they'll stand upright on their sides. And then you just lay in more and more. Traditionally you'd do this in one big long log. I'm just doing a little stump, I suppose. Let's do another little tower in case I don't get a good finished product shot of the first one.

You could of course just layer everything haphazardly in a cake pan, lasagna-style. "What do you think?" "It's good!". Now you literally just throw it in the fridge and wait until tomorrow. The whole mass kinda melts together and the creme firms up. You should have a few cookies leftover to throw into a bag and smash into a nice fine crumb. Sprinkle that over top, it makes anything look nice. And here's why I assembled and chilled the cakes on the sheet pan instead of on my serving plate. Grab a spatula and yoink — totally clean surface on the serving plate.

Now, with traditional icebox zebra cake, this is when you slice down one side and get a clean cut showing beautiful, delicate ribbons of chocolate. Because my cake actually has texture, it doesn't cut as cleanly. It mashes a little. But I'm sorry, that tastes way better than the old version made with store-bought wafers that just disintegrate. The fact that this doesn't cut so clean argues for making single portion cakes, or "lover's portions," in this case. That's a beautiful thing to hand to somebody and they can mess it up themselves. Still looks awfully pretty to me. And that cream has an outrageous, deep flavor thanks to the malted milk. The malt gives it a slight yellow hue, but again, you don't come to this dessert for refined appearances. You come for a sloppy summertime Oreo snowball...