Strawberry gingersnap icebox cake
One of the tropes of the food blog is the home cook who reviews a recipe despite completely changing the recipe with “improvements.” Well, today is the day that I present to you a recipe that I have, in fact, completely changed — although as a result, I will not review the original recipe (a strawberry gingersnap icebox cake from NYT). I assure you that all of my changes were totally reasonable! In the aggregate, they don’t necessarily save you time, but they do make for a really great icebox cake. Also, do not worry: your whipped cream will only look slightly curdled if you overwhip it, like I did mine. I made this again to bring to a friend’s for dinner and whipped the cream properly (but failed to photograph it).
Icebox cakes are simple, consisting of cookies softened overnight by whipped cream of some kind. The NYT recipe calls for gingersnaps and a fruit-puree-infused mascarpone cream, and berries on top. The idea of strawberries and gingersnaps was intriguing to me, but I was feeling lazy, so I subbed in the Serious Eats fruit whipped cream for the mascarpone cream. That whipped cream is one of my favorite things in the world — it is fruity and plush and I could eat it plain, but usually I use it to frost cakes. Also, it is way easier and faster to make than the cream in the NYT recipe.
The other thing I did was to cook the strawberries slightly, with a few tablespoons of sugar. This makes the strawberries a little bit less photogenic, but they don’t bleed as much into the whipped cream as much as fresh cut berries do. Also, I’m slightly allergic to raw strawberries, so it was self-serving; you can, of course, just use the berries raw. (Bonus: if you cook the strawberries, you can use the leftover syrup to make strawberry milk.)
On the topic of the gingersnaps, you can certainly make this cake with storebought gingersnaps, but you could also make your own. This might be a good option if you live on the West Coast and your Whole Foods only carries one variety of gingersnaps (How?! This would never happen on the East Coast), but also, if you are short on time and want to enjoy your cake sooner, I fully endorse storebought cookies. Just make sure you adjust the sugar in the recipe if your cookies are particularly sweet.
Strawberry Gingersnap Icebox Cake
Ingredients
1 oz (30g) freeze-dried strawberries
1/2c (100g) sugar
2 pints (910g) heavy cream
20 oz gingersnaps (more than 1 package, less than 2)
2 pints strawberries, hulled and cut in half
2T sugar
Directions
1. Make the strawberries: Place the strawberries in a medium saucepan and sprinkle with the sugar. Let stand 5 minutes, then add a few tablespoons of water and heat the strawberries over medium high heat. The idea here is not to cook the strawberries into oblivion, so take them off the heat when the berries have just softened. Let cool while you make the whipped cream. You will want to make sure the strawberries cool to room temp before you assemble the cake.
2. Make the whipped cream: Pulse the freeze-dried strawberries and sugar in the food processor until the fruit is mostly pulverized (it may not get completely powdered, depending on your food processor). You might want to put a dishtowel over your food processor while you do this, as the pulses will get pink dust wafting out of your food processor. Pour in the cream and pulse until the cream reaches the consistency of Greek yogurt — maybe 10-15 pulses or so. Feel free to open up the food processor partway to check the consistency. Make sure you start pulsing soon after you pour the cream into your food processor — unless you have a particularly large food processor, the cream will start leaking out of the bowl where the blade attaches, since the volume of liquid is so high.
3. Assemble the cake: Spread a layer of cookies over the bottom of a 9″x13″ glass dish. Cover with a third of the whipped cream, then scatter half of the strawberries over it. Repeat with another layer of cookies, cream, and strawberries, then top with the remaining third of the whipped cream. You may have to break up the cookies to get a complete layer, or feel free to overlap the cookies. Make sure the cookies on top have a good layer of whipped cream on them — if the cookies are too close to the surface, they may turn greenish as the cake sits (I’m not sure if that was due to the specific gingersnaps I was using…). Cover the dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight before serving.