A 1950s Icebox Dessert: Original and Adapted

The no-bake chocolate icebox cake that a whole generation made from the back of a cookie box, and how to make it now.

The classic American icebox cake is one of the simplest desserts ever popularized: thin chocolate wafers layered with sweetened whipped cream, chilled overnight until the wafers soften into cake. It became a household staple after the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) printed the recipe on packages of its Famous Chocolate Wafers. A version appeared in a 1929 advertisement, the "Famous Chocolate Refrigerator Roll" was printed on the tins by about 1930, and the icebox cake recipe was on the packaging through the following decades.

Nabisco did not invent the icebox cake, printed recipes exist from around 1920, but it made it famous, and its simplicity is exactly why it belongs in the mid-century kitchen. The original recipe and a modern version follow.

Historical note

The icebox cake is a product of the refrigerator age. As mechanical refrigerators, and before them the icebox, became common in American homes, a new category of no-bake, chill-to-set desserts appeared. They were appealing for an obvious reason: they produced an impressive dessert without heating up the kitchen, which mattered in summer and in homes without air conditioning.

Nabisco's contribution was to make the recipe effortless and to put it in front of millions. The company's Famous Chocolate Wafers, introduced in 1924, were thin, dark, and only lightly sweet, which made them ideal for layering. The recipe on the package asked the cook to do almost nothing but whip cream, stack, and wait. That promise, a from-scratch-tasting chocolate cake with no baking, is what carried it from the 1930s through the 1950s and beyond.