Level up your dessert game with an ice box cake with homemade cookies and a no bake cheesecake cream. The perfect dessert to make for a surprise visit!
Prep Time: 10 Minutes
Bake Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 Minutes (plus chilling)
Yield: 1 loaf cake
Special Equipment: stand or hand mixer, loaf tin and cling film
Ingredients:
Cookies:
150g self raising flour
50g cocoa
½ tsp salt
100g butter
125g brown sugar
110g caster sugar
2 tbsp water
Cheesecake cream:
250g cream cheese
225g double or whipping cream
80g icing sugar
1 tsp Vanilla
80g flavouring of choice (see tips for suggestions)
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 180/160 fan/gas mark 3
Place the butter, salt and both sugars in the bowl of your stand mixer or electric beaters and beat until smooth on low speed. You can also do this by hand using a wooden spoon to combine.
Add the flour and cocoa powder and mix on low to combine, don’t overmix or incorporate too much air.
Line your baking tray with parchment and place teaspoon sized balls evenly spaced on the baking tray. They will spread so leave some space between them.
Bake in the oven for 10 minutes or until the cookies have spread and look dry. You may need to do two trays depending on the size of your baking tray.
Allow the cookies to cool while you prepare the cheesecake cream.
In a small bowl mix the cream cheese, icing sugar, vanilla and any flavouring you’re using.
In a separate clean bowl whisk your cream (with beaters or by hand) until stiff peaks are formed. Be careful not to over whisk.
Line your loaf tin with a few layers of cling film, making sure it’s completely covered otherwise your cake will stick.
Fold ⅓ of the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture, then pour the cream cheese mix into the remaining cream in the larger bowl and fold to combine.
To assemble make sure your cookies are cooled and have a metal spoon and knife handy.
Spoon some of the cheesecake cream into the base of the loaf tray, the layer should be about 1 inch thick.
Take your cookies and match their sizes, spread some cheesecake cream and sandwich them together so you have cookie sandwiches.
You now need to stand the cookies up in the tin and spoon cheesecake cream in between them, this is easier when they’re sandwiches.
Fill the entire tin, make sure there’s cheesecake cream between each cookie and reserve a little for the top.
Spread the remaining mix over the top of the cookies and cover with cling film.
Set in the fridge for at least 12 hours, ideally 24 - this allows the cookies to soften.
When you’re ready to serve, remove the ice box cake from the fridge, take off the cling film and run a knife around the tin between the cling film and the tin. Demould on to a serving plate and peel off the cling film.
You can decorate your icebox cake with fruit, chocolate, sprinkles etc before slicing and serving.
Tips:
Flavouring can be anything that is a sauce or puree, salted caramel sauce, chocolate fudge, raspberry puree are all great choices.
This recipe can be made vegan by swapping the butter, cream cheese and double cream for plant based alternatives.
For a decadent finish consider a ganache topping (LINK TO GANACHE FROSTING)
