If tiramisu and Oreos had a spooky baby. # 421: Mocha Icebox Cake

October means adding unnecessary eyeballs to all my bakes. Yay Halloween!

The sprinkles make him look like a fuzzy extra from Monsters Inc. We clearly skew towards the adorable side of Halloween in this house.

The decade is 1929 and you’re an ad man for Nabisco wondering how to get people to buy your thin, crispy chocolate wafer cookies that aren’t all that special on their own. A light bulb goes on over your head! Why not put a recipe for a chilled cream dessert on the package that uses the trendy new iceboxes everyone’s installing in their homes? Jackpot.

Fast forward to 2023, when they decided to discontinue said crispy chocolate wafer cookies. Luckily for all the nostalgic bakers out there, the cookies are easy to make! But also Nabisco, how dare you.

The basic idea is genius: let the moisture from the cream absorb into the crispy cookies, transforming them into soft cakey layers. Truly the laziest way to cake.

I was a lil skeptical of how soft the dough was, but all it needed was a freezer nap to be workable.

Squish.

The real debate was, do I cut out smaller cookies or just do big circles the size of the cake pan?

Little circles won!

They said nope, we’d rather a be a rectangle.

Lining with parchment paper because I don’t trust any nonstick pan to ever keep its promises.

Basically mascarpone whipped cream with kahlua and espresso powder added in. Um, YUM.

Mascarpone mountain peaks.

Floof.

Chaos scraps fill in the gaps.

The baking math could have gone crazy here, but I kept with the lazy vibe of this cake and just eyeballed how much filling to use in each layer. It turns out that one batch of the (unrelated) cookie recipe was just the right amount for one batch of filling!

Ready for some fridge beauty rest.

*snaps fingers* It’s the next morning, otherwise known as cake time!

It released from the pan surprisingly well, despite not lining the sides with parchment paper. Maybe someday I’ll be one of those bakers who uses acetate sheets, but not today folks.

Happy munching!

Recipe mostly from: https://barefootcontessa.com/recipes/mocha-chocolate-icebox-cake

Cookie recipe from: https://www.theflouredtable.com/chocolate-wafer-cookies/#recipe