Summer’s easiest cake

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The most elegant way to not bake

It’s too hot to bake, but not too hot to want a little drama.

The kind you slice with a butter knife and serve on a chipped floral plate, cool and collapsing in the best way. There’s something about an icebox cake that feels like a relic from another life — one with hand-labeled Tupperware and block parties and the kind of ambition that fits in a 9x13. It’s nostalgic, yes. But also a little chaotic. Suspiciously good for how little effort it seems to require. 

I’ve been thinking about icebox cakes all summer, mostly because I’ve been thinking about how to avoid sweating through my clothes and still bring something nice to a dinner. I don’t want anything fussy. I don’t want anything that involves tempering. But I do want something with structure. With bite. With an air of elegance that says, “Yes, this has Cool Whip in it, but she studied abroad.”

Earlier this year, I spoke with cookbook author and Food Network star Molly Yeh about sweet salads—another genre of retro-adjacent desserts that never quite escaped their Jell-O-pocked reputation. Yeh’s newest book, “Sweet Farm,” includes an entire chapter devoted to rethinking those maligned delights: roasted rhubarb and strawberries with yogurt whip, pretzel streusel and sumac; black and white cookie salad; pomegranate coconut gelatin molds; and ube fluff. 

“A turning point came for me when I realized how delicious and creatively satisfying these salads would be using from-scratch components like fresh whip, from-scratch cookies and unflavored gelatin with fresh fruit juices,” she told me. “Once I started playing around with flavor combinations that I love — like rhubarb, mint, sumac and mascarpone and black and white cookies — I realized the world is our cookie salad oyster.”

And the same, I’ve realized, goes for the icebox dessert. We tend to think of no-bake sweets as overly processed relics from midcentury magazines, but they’re actually a canvas. Once you break the too-sweet pudding barrier and start experimenting with your own favorite textures and flavors, there’s real potential for dessert glory with zero oven time.

Techniques for a modern icebox cake

Start with a hero flavor

Think in themes, not just ingredients. Instead of chocolate-vanilla, try lemon-ginger (sharp, floral, clean) or cherry and almond (like a Black Forest cake left out on the porch of a summer rental). Earl grey with honey tastes like tea time in an overly air-conditioned art museum.

If you're using citrus, zest is your best friend—it perfumes the cream without adding liquid, which means more flavor, less soup.

Upgrade your “cookie” layer

This is your structure and your seasoning. Go for something with a little backbone: thin, crisp gingersnaps that go tender overnight; store-bought shortbread with buttery heft; or ladyfingers, if you're chasing tiramisu energy. Thin slices of toasted pound cake work surprisingly well, and feel a little louche in a good way.

What you want is a cookie that will absorb without disintegrating — a texture that yields but doesn’t vanish.

Whip it yourself (and give it a personality)

Real whipped cream is decadent. Use cold heavy cream and a splash of vanilla — or almond extract, if you’re feeling lush. Add a spoonful of sugar, or skip it if your cookie base is already sweet. Folding in a bit of mascarpone or Greek yogurt adds a subtle tang and makes the whipped cream behave like frosting in a better mood.

Don’t overwhip; you want soft peaks. If it starts to look like cottage cheese, you’ve gone too far. We’re building drama, not butter.

Layer with intention

This is the part where you get to feel like a pastry architect. Start with cookies, then cream, then repeat until you run out or your vessel tells you to stop. A spoonful of jam between the cream layers is never a bad idea — especially something tart, like sour cherry or rhubarb. You can also swirl the jam directly into the whipped cream for a marbled effect that looks fancier than it is.

A slightly salted fruit or jam layer is a pro move. Just trust me.

Let the fridge finish it

The magic happens cold. You want at least six hours, ideally overnight. The cream will soften the cookies; the cookies will firm up the cream. Everything becomes one coherent, sliceable thing that tastes like memory.

Cover it loosely — plastic wrap is fine, but if you’re a foil person, don’t let it touch the cream. It’ll leave little silver smudges like a disappointing eyeshadow.

Garnish with confidence

Top it like you care. A flourish of lemon zest, crushed cookies, black cherries, a drizzle of honey, a spoonful of melted jam — anything that adds contrast, shine or a bit of drama. It’s summer. Go overboard.

Three icebox cakes worth not turning on the oven for

These aren’t recipes, exactly — they’re invitations. There are no measurements here, just loose instructions and good instincts. Consider them flavor blueprints: stackable, swappable, easily adapted to what you have on hand or what you’re craving at 9 p.m. The important thing is balance: crunch and cream, fruit and fat, sweetness with something to cut through it.

Pick one, tweak it, improvise. Let the fridge do the work.

1. Amalfi Summer

Inspired by delizia al limone

Layers of crisp lemon wafer cookies, lemon zest–spiked whipped cream, and a tangy smear of lemon curd between each tier. The whipped cream gets a little lift from mascarpone and a splash of Limoncello (optional, but highly encouraged). Garnish with candied lemon peel or crushed amaretti cookies for a little crunch.

This one tastes like air conditioning after a long swim, or like someone handsome handed you a lemon tart in Capri.

2. Forest Goth Birthday Cake

Inspired by Black Forest gateau

Use thin chocolate wafer cookies (or even day-old chocolate cake slices, if you’re bold), layered with soft whipped cream and brandy-soaked cherries. Add a little cocoa powder or melted bittersweet chocolate to the cream if you want depth. A swirl of cherry jam between layers adds drama. Top with more cherries—fresh or boozy—and a dusting of shaved chocolate.

It’s brooding, a little sticky, and best eaten late at night in your slip dress.

3. Late Summer Picnic

Inspired by goat cheese with honey and stone fruit

A mix of whipped cream and chèvre gives this cake a light tang—don’t worry, it’s not savory, it’s just adult. Layer with almond biscotti or ladyfingers, swirl in apricot jam or fresh macerated peaches and finish with a honey drizzle and toasted almonds on top.

This is the one you bring to impress someone who says they don’t like dessert.

They’ll change their mind halfway through the second slice.

Let’s build a collective icebox dreambook: what flavors would you layer in? Reply in the comments and tell me what’s living rent-free in your dessert brain this summer.

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What to make this week: Strawberry-rhubarb icebox cake with pistachio brittle

Let’s stay in the icebox zone, shall we? Rick Martinez’s strawberry-rhubarb version is what happens when a cake and a sundae fall in love on a summer road trip. It’s all lush mascarpone cream marbled with homemade jam, fresh strawberries tucked in like secrets, and a final rain of pistachio brittle that crunches and melts like sunshine on pavement. The whole thing gets built in a loaf pan and frozen, which means it's not just stunning—it’s also a make-ahead gift to your future self.

Rick folds in orange zest to boost the fruit and splits a vanilla bean for the cream (yes, worth it), but if you’re feeling loose, you can sub in Greek yogurt and store-bought jam, and still wind up with something party-worthy. Just don’t skip the brittle. That nutty, honeyed crunch is what turns this from “nice” to “next-level.”

What we’re reading and watching: “China Towns” and “Ren Faire”

One of the unexpected pleasures of living with someone who shares your obsessions is that books have a way of appearing on the shelf, unannounced. “China Towns” was one of those. The author, Jean-François Mallet, trained under legends like Joël Robuchon and Michel Rostang before leaving restaurant kitchens behind to become a globe-trotting food photographer. This book—part cookbook, part travelogue—is the result: 416 pages of luminous photography and regional recipes that trace the evolution of Chinatown cuisine across cities like New York, Paris, San Francisco and Sydney.

Western interpretations of Chinese food are often a few degrees removed from their source material, shaped by local palates and hybridized through neighboring diasporas. Mallet captures not just these culinary cross-pollinations, but the architectural and cultural textures of the neighborhoods themselves. The book is organized like a takeout menu—dumplings, soups, noodles, seafood, even bubble tea—but it feels more like a passport than a manual. I closed it wanting to hop the Red Line to Chicago’s Chinatown, photograph some dim sum and stock up on ingredients to build my own version at home.

On the screen side of things, I’ve been in a Lance Oppenheim spiral—revisiting his singular, surreal nonfiction films. There’s “Some Kind of Heaven,” his dreamlike portrait of a Florida retirement community and “Spermworld,” a quietly unnerving dive into the strange world of modern fertility. But this weekend it’s all about “Ren Faire,” his latest three-part series for HBO, which might best be described as “Succession” in chainmail. When the aging monarch of America’s largest Renaissance festival announces his abdication, a power struggle erupts among a rogue’s gallery of suitors: an actor, a former elephant trainer and a kettle corn baron. It’s Shakespearean, if Shakespeare had a camera crew and a lot more smoked turkey legs.

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