Yesterday, we explored the history and glories of icebox cake. Today we present the icebox pie

Unlike yesterday’s recipe, this one does require a bit of baking—just 10 to 15 minutes in the oven. You make the filling while the crust bakes. Then, into the fridge it goes, to chill and set the filling.

This recipe has a white chocolate and cream cheese filling swirled with fresh raspberries with a buttery crust made from vanilla wafers. vanilla wafer crust. It’s cool and creamy and sweet and refreshing. Just the thing to satisfy your summertime sweet tooth!

This Raspberry White Chocolate Icebox Pie was developed by Jennifer McHenry of Bake Or Break, and sent to us by GoBoldWithButter.com.

Prep time is 25 minutes, cook time (for the crust) is 15 minutes.
 
 
RECIPE: WHITE CHOCOLATE ICE BOX PIE

Ingredients For A 9-Inch Pie

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT oven to 350°F. Lightly butter 9-inch tart or pie pan.

2. COMBINE the crushed vanilla wafers and butter until thoroughly mixed. Press mixture firmly and evenly into the bottom and up the sides of the prepared pan. Bake 12 to 15 minutes, or until crust is lightly browned and dry. Set the crust aside to cool.

3. PLACE the white chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat at half-power in the microwave in 30-second increments, until the chocolate melts when stirred. Set aside to cool.

4. BEAT the cooled chocolate, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla with an electric mixer on medium speed, until smooth and creamy.

5. PLACE the heavy cream in a large, chilled mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer with a whisk attachment, beat at medium-high speed until soft peaks form. Gently fold the whipped cream into the white chocolate mixture. Transfer the mixture to the cooled pie crust and spread evenly.

6. PLACE the raspberries in a blender or food processor and process until puréed. Use a small spoon to drop the raspberries over the top of the pie filling. Use a thin knife to swirl the raspberries into the filling.

7. REFRIGERATE the pie for at least 2 hours before serving.
 
 
> The history of ice box cake/pie.
 
 
> The history of white chocolate.
 
 
> The history of raspberries.

[1] White chocolate with raspberries icebox pie (photo © Bake Or Break | Go Bold With Butter).

[2] Fresh raspberries (photo © Good Eggs).

[3] Our favorite affordable white chocolate is Lindt, widely available in the U.S., MSRP $3.99 for a 4.4-ounce bar. For pricier gourmet brands, here’s our article on the best white chocolate bars.

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So many people love bacon so much, that NYY Steak in New York City has created this NYY Steak Bacon appetizer.

It’s made with thick-cut Nueske slab bacon that’s cured and smoked in house (with a maple glaze). There’s a bit of sautéed spinach in the center—the salad—and a drizzle of maple syrup.

Make it for your favorite bacon lover. All you need are:

 
Or, add a poached quail egg, a side of toast and mayo, for a deconstructed BLT.

Or, replace the toast and mayo with halved cherry tomatoes and a quartered hard-boiled egg, for a postmodern spinach salad.
Check out the different types of bacon in our Bacon Glossary.

We published our first beer cocktail recipe, Almond Ale Spritzer, five years ago. It’s time to revisit the options.

These cocktails were developed by Bohemia Beer, made in a Pilsner style beer. But you can try other styles: Check out our Beer Glossary for the different types of beer.

For those who prefer wine, check out winetails.
 
 
RECIPE #1: BEER MIMOSA

Ingredients For 1 Drink

 
Preparation

1. POUR the beer into a wine glass. Top with orange juice and stir gently.

2. GARNISH with the orange slice—or, be creative and make a curl from the peel, as shown in the photo above.

Michelada is a Mexican drink: beer mixed with ingredients similar to Bloody Mary mix. “Chela” is Mexican slang for a cold beer, and michelada is a portmanteau of “mi chela helada,” or my cold beer.

Here’s more about the Michelada.

 
For The Michelada Mix

Ingredients For 4½ Cups

Preparation

1. MAKE the Bloody Maria mix: Combine all ingredients in a blender and mix until smooth.

2. COMBINE the salt and pepper and spread out on a flat plate. Rub the rims of 6 tall glasses with the cut lime, then twist in the salt and pepper to coat the entire rim.

3. POUR 2 tablespoons (1 ounce) of tequila into each glass. Add ¾ cup of beer and ¾ cup of the Bloody Maria mix and mix the drinks well with a spoon.

4. GARNISH: Place a lime wedge on the edge of each glass. Skewer a cherry tomato, cube of cheese and pickled jalapeño slice and place in glass.

[2] A chocolate icebox cake is made with chocolate whipped cream. This one is built in a loaf pan (photo © The King’s Cupboard).

[3] A lemon and blueberry icebox cake. Here’s the recipe (photo © C & H Sugar).

[4] A Black Forest trifle. This version uses brownies instead of chocolate cake, but the cake-and-whipped-cream combination was a predecessor to the icebox cake Here’s the recipe (photo © Pampered Chef).

[5] A charlotte is a molded custard or cream. The mold is first lined with ladyfingers, sponge cake, or other baked goods, and unmolded into the charming dessert you see here. This charlotte uses Biscuits Roses de Reims, a pink-hued French biscuit—a cookie in American English. A charlotte russe uses ladyfingers (photo © Fossier).

[6] The classic Nabisco “refrigerator roll,” which popularized icebox cakes in the U.S. (photo © Kraft Foods).

[7] Today, icebox cakes are made round, rectangular, and square (photo © Culinary Hill).

Updated July 2026

The icebox (also spelled ice box) cake falls in the blessed category of summer foods that require no heat to cook. Just as good, it can be made by people who don’t cook or those who are just learning. And best of all, it delights everyone.

National Chocolate Wafer Day is July 3rd.

(For those who hate the heat, pick up a copy of Cool Kitchen: No Oven, No Stove, No Sweat! 125 Delicious, No-Work Recipes For Summertime Or Anytime, a book that’s out of print and can be bought for a song.)

Below:

> The history of icebox cake.

> The recipe for the original icebox cake.

> More icebox cake recipes.

> Icebox Cake cookbook.

Elsewhere on The Nibble:

> The history of cake and the different types of cake: a photo glossary.

> The history of chocolate wafers.

> The history of whipped cream.

> The year’s 55 cake holidays.

> The year’s 44 cookie holidays.
 

[8] Strawberry ice box cake is a sister to strawberry shortcake, made with graham crackers or vanilla wafers instead of a biscuit or yellow cake. Here’s the recipe (photo © Taste Of Home).
 
 
1. THE HISTORY OF ICE BOX CAKE

The Earlier Inspiration

An icebox cake—also called a refrigerator cake—is a no-bake cake, a descendant of the charlotte and the trifle.

 
 
Icebox Cake: An American Invention

Wikipedia says that the Icebox Cake was first introduced in the U.S. during World War I, but that its popularity took off in the 1920s and 1930s. Different brands of products, from wafers to condensed milk to pudding, began printing “back of the box” recipes. As long as one had an icebox in which to keep the whipped cream cake, it could be made on a hot summer day without turning on the oven or stove (in the era before air conditioning, which didn’t begin to be installed in homes until the 1950s, becoming more common in the 1960s).

The cake is left overnight in the icebox; the wafers are softened by moisture from the whipped cream so the cake can be easily sliced. When cut at a 45-degree angle, the stripes of chocolate and cream are displayed.

Nabisco printed a recipe on the back of its box of Famous Chocolate Wafers, called “Famous Chocolate Refrigerator Roll.” In the original recipe, the wafers are sandwiched with whipped cream and stacked to form logs, which were laid side-by-side with more whipped cream to frost the exterior. See the technique in this recipe from Joy The Baker, who cleverly transforms the logs into a Christmas yule log cake.

The cake can also be assembled in a baking dish—an easy option for novices.

In recent times, icebox cake connoisseurs have made variations using caramel, fresh fruit (bananas and strawberries are popular), fruit curd, jam, peanut butter, pudding, and other fillings; and graham crackers, tea biscuits, vanilla wafers, and other cookies instead of chocolate wafers. The whipped cream itself can be made in any number of flavors.

Ernestine Emanuel of New York is credited with creating the graham cracker icebox cake. The story appears to be a family tradition rather than a documented historical event. An Italian immigrant living in New York, she purportedly created her version of an icebox cake with graham crackers and cooked pudding while on her honeymoon in Atlantic City. By the 1940s, the dessert had become popular within her family and community.
 

[9] The original Nabisco icebox cake was chocolate wafers and whipped cream laid out in a log shape and covered with more whipped cream. Here’s the recipe (photo © Spend With Pennies).
 

[10] Nabisco discontinued the wafer cookies in 2023. Clever cooks replaced them with Oreos, removing the “creme” (which is a whipped mixture of powdered sugar, vegetable oils such as palm and canola, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial flavoring) and replacing it with whipped cream. Here’s the recipe (photo © Taste Of Home).
 
 
2. RECIPE: THE ORIGINAL ICEBOX CAKE

The ingredients are the same as Nabisco’s original recipe, but the instructions have been adapted slightly to provide more options. More icebox cake recipes follow.
Note that while most recipes don’t call for it, we personally use stabilized whipped cream, which won’t collapse after a day.
 
Ingredients

 
Chocolate icebox cake. Many people refer to the original icebox cake as “chocolate icebox cake” because it contains chocolate wafers. No.

A chocolate icebox cake has both chocolate wafers and chocolate whipped cream. Here’s the recipe for chocolate whipped cream.

Beyond the original icebox cake (which is “vanilla” because of the vanilla whipped cream, other flavors are called by their key flavor: coffee ice box cake, lemon icebox cake (photo #11), strawberry icebox cake (photo #8), etc.
 
Preparation

1. MAKE the whipped cream: Beat the cream with the sugar and vanilla until soft peaks form.

2. SPREAD a thin layer of whipped cream on a round serving plate. Arrange six cookies in a circle, with another cookie in the center. Spread the layer of cookies with a half cup of whipped cream, but not over the edge. The whipped cream should be at least a quarter-inch thick between the cookie layers.

3. REPEAT until the cake is four or five inches high, and top it with a finishing layer of whipped cream. Stagger the cookies in each layer (see the photo above). The cookie edges should be visible on the side of the cake; but if you like, you can ice the sides before serving, creating even more of a surprise when the cake is sliced and served. If you want to ice the sides, whip an extra cup of cream before serving. By waiting until right before serving, the plastic wrap won’t stick to the sides.

4. COVER with plastic wrap (or a cake dome); a trick is to place toothpicks around the rim of the cake to keep the plastic wrap off of the whipped cream. Refrigerate for at least eight hours, but overnight resting makes the cake even moister.

5. GARNISH as desired before serving.
 
 

[11] Lemon icebox cake made with graham crackers. Here’s the recipe (photo © Taste of Home).
 
3. MORE ICEBOX CAKE RECIPES

 
Plus

 
 
4. THE ICEBOX CAKE COOKBOOK

Just in time for this summer comes Icebox Cakes: Recipes for the Coolest Cakes in Town.

The author, Jean Sagendorf, has taken the icebox cake a leap forward by making variations in numerous favorite dessert flavors. Banana Rum, Key Lime, Lemon Caramel, Mexican Chocolate Spice, Peanut Butter Cup, Peppermint Chocolate, Red Velvet, Raspberry Ganache, and Salty Caramel are just some of her modern icebox cakes. You can start at the beginning and make the project your summer’s “Julie and Julia.”

________________
 
*Since Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers were discontinued in 2023, people have substituted every type of flat cookie:

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We recently wrote about gazpacho; now we’re expanding the conversation to recipe below, Chilled Cucumber Yogurt Soup.

Chilled soups can be savory or sweet, smooth or chunky, thick or thin, creamy or fat-free, flavored with your favorite herbs and spices, garnished with anything from croutons to chopped nuts.

You can use a base of milk/cream, purée, stock/broth, yogurt, even bread and water or beer.

You can serve the soup in bowls, cups, mason jars, mugs, wine glasses. You can serve mini-portions in shot glasses or juice glasses.

You can carry it around in a thermos.

If you don’t often cook—or if you want to teach a household member to cook—these recipes are pretty foolproof. Most can be made in a blender.

While soups with meat (beef, chicken) or lots of butter don’t lend themselves to chilling (the fat globules solidify), you won’t notice their absence. Just name your favorites and look for a recipe.

 
The recipes can be as classic as white gazpacho (the original gazpacho) or as modern as iced carrot and orange soup.

Nothing is easier than blender soup. Try this yummy recipe…

…and check out these 9 ways to use cucumbers.

strong>Ingredients For 4 Servings

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE all ingredients in a blender; process until smooth. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours or overnight.

2. TASTE the soup just before serving and adjust seasonings as desired. Serve in bowls garnished with finely diced cucumber, red onion and a drizzle of olive oil.

 
Recipe adapted from Andrew Zimmern, FoodAndWine.com.
 
 
CHECK OUT THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SOUPIN OUR SOUP GLOSSARY.

[2] Chilled cucumber soup (photo Jacob Barss Bailey | CC BY NC-ND 2.0 License).

[3] Raspberry soup with yogurt. Here’s the recipe (photo © Eat Wisconsin Cheese).

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