How To Make A No-Bake Cake

What's my favorite part?

I think the caramel cream.

I mean the caramel cream,

it's the most significant part of the whole cake.

And it's really good.

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An ice box cake, you just have to assemble

all the ingredients into a little pan

and throw it in the fridge

and then forget about it for a few hours.

You start with store-bought cookies,

which is my favorite thing ever because after they go

into the dessert, they soften up and become cake.

So you don't have to bake anything.

We're using store-bought ginger cookies.

Then we're gonna layer that with a quick raspberry jam

and a caramel whipped cream.

And then it's gonna sort of set together

into this beautiful little square

that we can cut and serve without ever turning on the oven.

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To my pot, I'm gonna add my fresh raspberries,

a little bit of granulated sugar.

And now just for a little extra fun,

I'm adding some crystallized ginger

and I think crystallized ginger and raspberries

go really well together.

And it's delicious.

We all snack on it.

My son loves to snack on it.

The raspberries are very sweet.

So the ginger sort of cuts through

a little bit of that sweetness,

adds a little bit of spiciness.

So it's not just sort of one note.

So there's no water or anything in here, just berries

because basically the heat is gonna break down the berries.

I didn't want to add much else because I didn't want

to dilute the flavor at all.

I'm just sort of mashing it up.

I'm waiting until they warm up

and release some of their liquid

and break down a little bit.

I really don't want to cook it like crazy

because I just don't.

I want it to taste fresh.

And I am gonna add a little bit of cornstarch

because I want it to be slightly thicker.

And I'm just adding a little bit of my hot jam.

I don't want to add the cornstarch directly to my mixture

because then you might have lumps.

So I'm adding it to my hot jam in the little bowl.

This is a slurry.

And then I'm gonna add that back into my puree.

And now this does have to cook for about a minute

because you don't want it to taste raw

and you do want it to thicken up a little bit

and that needs a little bit of heat, so.

You can kind of tell because it starts sort of opaque

and then as you continue to cook it, it becomes clear again.

You see, it's like shiny again.

And I'm leaving all the seeds in

because I don't mind them one bit,

but if you want to strain out the seeds,

you can certainly do that.

I mean, if you wanted to, you could just call it a day.

Eat this with a spoon or on yogurt

or ice cream or something.

And let it cool down completely.

So you don't want it to be hot when you add it

to your layers.

Let that go.

And we'll make our caramel cream.

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To make our caramel cream,

we have to start by making a caramel sauce.

I like to put my water in first

and then put your sugar in,

because my goal is to not get too much sugar

on the outside of the pan.

I don't want anything sticking to the outside of the pan

that could fall back in and crystallize my caramel mixture.

Then I just sort of give it a loving little swirl

so that it's all moist.

And now I'm gonna turn on the heat

and I'm gonna let it do its thing.

I'm not gonna touch it.

I'm not really gonna swirl it, until things get started.

I'm just gonna let live.

That's the best advice I can give you for caramel,

just don't F with it because it'll be fine.

If it crystallizes, which you'll see,

it'll get like sort of bubbly and wavy and funny looking,

all you have to do is just add a few drops of water

and reheat it and it will come back.

And the truth is you don't even need water.

The only reason to put water in there is

to sort of slow the process down,

to make it a little more manageable.

Okay, so now I'm seeing it's starting

to get a little bit caramel colored in one little corner.

So that means, come back to the stove and pay attention

because once it starts going, it goes pretty fast.

I am gonna swirl it.

Once it gets really brown in that one corner,

I'm gonna swirl it.

I don't know why anybody would buy caramel

because it's so easy and so much more delicious

when you make it from scratch.

See that color.

It's pretty dark now.

But imagine when you add your heavy cream,

it's gonna get lighter.

So you want it to be nice and dark.

It is gonna seize a tiny bit when you add the cream

and you just cook it for another couple of minutes,

until it smooths out,

it looks kind of loose now,

but I promise when it cools, it will thicken up.

So it is super important that this caramel cools down

completely before you whip your cream

and fold them together.

If you try to whip this into your cream,

it will all just become a puddle and be really sad.

Although it probably would still taste good.

You can make like a milkshake or something.

I'm really into turning mistakes into something else.

So don't throw away your mistakes.

All right, there is my caramel.

Look at that.

Do you see how easy that is?

We have our beautiful caramel sauce, completely cool.

And some heavy cream.

I had my bowl in the freezer

and my whisk attachment in the freezer.

It just helps the cream come together a little faster.

So we'll put that in.

[mixer whirs]

Just the action of adding the caramel will continue

to stiffen the cream.

So we want to start with it at medium

so that we end up with stiff.

We're almost there.

I love watching cream whip.

I just love dairy so much.

Let's see.

Yeah, that's a nice soft peak.

See how the little peek moves.

See that?

She bends over a little. [laughing]

Okay, so now I'm just folding in my caramel.

If you feel like you got a little too stiff,

which actually mine kind of did,

you can just add a little bit more cold, heavy cream

and mix that in.

And then it'll sort of get a little more fluid.

Okay.

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I have this beautiful eight inch square baking pan.

And I really like the ones that have super straight corners

as opposed to the ones that have rounded corners

and that sort of bow outwards.

Because when you build it in one of those

and you take it out of the pan, it just looks funny.

I'm gonna line it with a couple of strips

of parchment paper,

and you want to make sure you have this,

like two inches of extra parchment on either side

so that you can lift your cake out when it's finished.

And I didn't butter the pan when I put this in,

because we're gonna chill it.

So we don't want our butter to firm up

and glue our cake to the pan, basically.

The first thing we have to do is put down

our beautiful little ginger cookies.

These are store-bought ginger cookies.

They're nice and thin and crisp and delicious.

They won't be crisp once we make our cake,

but they're a really good cookie.

But I'm using ginger today because I want it to sort of tie

it in with that beautiful crystallized ginger

that's in the puree.

Don't stress if they break.

That's the beauty of an icebox cake,

it don't matter because you're not gonna know.

You're not gonna be able to see it.

So I might even just break a couple.

So we have sort of a full layer of cookies on the bottom.

I like to put a layer of cookies on the bottom,

just to give the whole cake a little bit of structure.

So it's sort of easier to serve.

Now, we're gonna put some of our beautiful raspberry sauce.

I think an offset spatula is gonna be your friend here.

And now we'll put three quarters of a cup

of fresh raspberries,

but I'm gonna stand them up

because then when we slice the cake,

we'll get these beautiful pieces

that have visible raspberries.

And now we'll do two cups of our caramel whipped cream.

I'm gonna dollop it around because this is the part.

Now, if you wanted to be really precise about it,

you could throw this into a piping bag and pipe

the caramel cream over so that you don't disturb those

little raspberries, but it's not essential.

I like to measure it for two reasons.

Number one, I don't want to run out of anything

before I get to the top layer.

And secondly, I want all the layers to be pretty much

exactly the same thickness.

Just spreading this out evenly.

We are gonna repeat this one, two, three times.

It's kind of like making a lasagna out of cookies.

Now let's do that again.

So half a cup of this business.

A little extra.

For this layer, I decided not to set my raspberries up.

Two more cups of cream.

Well, you know, I'm trying to dispel the myth

that baking has to be super fussy and precise

because I want it to be fun.

I mean, you don't have to have dessert.

Dessert is just for fun.

So the process of making dessert should be equally fun

and stress free.

Now since this is my last, I'm not even gonna measure it.

I'm just gonna use it up.

The moisture from the cream and the sauce will sort of seep

into those cookies and soften them

and make them sort of cake-like.

All the flavors will sort of, you know, meld together.

It'll be good.

Ooh, yum.

And that's it.

Easy peasy.

Now we just have to wrap it up.

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Small servings.

All right, everybody say a little prayer.

Getting this out.

If you have a buddy in the kitchen,

you can get them to grab two sides,

but I'm gonna do it solo.

Okay, she's out.

Look at the sides.

Doesn't it look so pretty?

It's so luscious and creamy and yum.

So we have our cake.

It's okay if it's a little messy on the edges.

Don't don't stress about it

because also we're gonna top it with some beautiful fruit.

It's gonna look cute.

I like to put raspberries on top.

So everyone knows what is inside.

These pretty gooseberries.

Let me cut some of them.

They're really good.

Cause they're, they're sort of tart.

They're delicious.

I love them.

The science behind my decorating is just trust.

Trust your gut.

Just feel it out.

Do what feels fun.

I don't want to cut these.

I like how big, how pretty there are.

How red they are.

They look so pretty on top.

I think it looks kind of fun.

Also, you know that all that cream is super duper rich.

So the extra fresh fruit kind of cuts all that richness.

Voila!

Now we can slice it.

I have a little bucket here of hot water

to sort of clean my knife in between slices.

It's not essential, but it's nice.

It's very soft.

So you can cut with anything.

Let's see if I can get a piece out.

Aye, aye, aye.

Mmm.

Look at that.

I'm gonna go right here

because I want all those raspberries.

It's so soft.

It's really, I mean, it's pretty delicious.

It's so soft.

All those wonderful cookies sort of softened into a cake.

The cream is really rich,

but all that beautiful fruit sort of cuts it.

You get just a hint of ginger, but it's not a lot,

just a hint from the crystallized ginger

that's in the compote,

but then the fresh fruit sort of has a little more texture

to all that softness.

And it's pretty good.

I think this is the perfect summer dish

because you get to use a ton of fresh fruit,

all things that are in season

and you don't have to turn on your oven

so your house doesn't get hot,

which your whole family will be very happy about.

I love her.

I love her.

We're buddies.

Do I have an icebox?

I have a refrigerator.

Is an ice box just like with a literal block of ice?