Chocolate Hazelnut Meringue Icebox Cake (The Beast)

Yo, you know I love a good icebox cake. They are one of the best ways to celebrate: leave whipped cream sandwiched between cake or cookie layers in the fridge for long enough, and it becomes a thick buttery frosting (without the butter!). This meringue cake, nicknamed “The Beast” by its creator for the challenge of cutting it, is definitely better off from some refrigerator timeout. After an overnight stint in the icebox, the meringue and cream meld and stabilize, but there is no loss of crunch, texture, or flavor like you might expect; plus, it’s really not that tough to cut after a proper cooling. Better said: take this baby for a spin!

But don’t get the wrong idea about me and Valentine’s Day. This cake, while surely befitting a sweetheart, did not come about in an homage to today. There ain’t a single thing that’s disagreeable about romance (give me more romance!), but I relish the blogging community much for its commitment to creativity, and that all seems to disappear in the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day. All of my favorite DIY sites are suddenly posting links to mass-produced “him and her” gifts to purchase, and whether it’s an effort to monetize or a need to keep up with What The People Want, the buy-it-now attitude behind Valentine’s Day is counter to these sites’ everyday goals. Maybe we can all find some relief and inspiration in food blogs today instead: they often emphasize creativity and taking risks—both elements of a real romantic gesture, no?

Getting back to what’s really important here: this cake is totally delicious and totally nuts. You will love it, and it will love you right back without asking for a single thing.

Chocolate Hazelnut Meringue Icebox Cake
Adapted from Daniel Jasso for Food & Wine

A few notes: if you're short on space or nervous about cutting into this cake, consider making a bunch of two-inch cookies instead of eight-inch layers. You could stack two cookies with cream in the middle and on top, and they'd be single-serving. Either way, this is definitely a dessert to make the day before you intend to eat it. The meringue takes several hours to bake and cool, and then the whole thing goes into the fridge. The recipe counsels us to cut with a serrated knife, but I found the nicest slices came about after I stabbed straight through the top of the cake with a butcher knife.

I didn't change much here: just reduced the amounts of sugar and chocolate ever so slightly. Is that sacrilege? The original calls for six ounces of each chocolate, but that seemed just a bit too rich for my family. The final product certainly didn't suffer!

7 ounces hazelnuts (about 1 1/2 cups)
6 large egg whites, at room temperature
Pinch of salt
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar (original calls for 1 1/2)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
5 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped fine
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled
3 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup powdered sugar
Chocolate shavings for garnish

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line two very large or three regular baking sheets with parchment paper. Trace three eight-inch circles across the parchment. (I had to use three medium sheets, so one circle on each sheet.)

2.  Spread the hazelnuts on a baking sheet or in a pie pan and toast for 12 to 14 minutes, until browned. Close hot hazelnuts into a non-terry-cloth towel, allow to steam for five or so minutes, then rub to remove the skins; don’t worry if some of the skins are still on. Chop the nuts fairly small, but don’t powder them.. Lower the oven temperature to 225 degrees F.

3.  In the bowl of a standing electric mixer fitted with the whisk, beat the egg whites with the salt at medium-high speed until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the granulated sugar at high speed until stiff and glossy. Beat in the vanilla and almond extracts. Fold in the hazelnuts and chocolate chips. Pour the melted chocolate down the side of the bowl and gently fold in until the meringue is lightly marbled.

4.  Divide the meringue evenly between the three drawn circles; spread evenly. Bake for two hours and 30 minutes, until crisp; rotate the pans halfway through baking. Turn off the oven, prop oven door open, and let the meringues cool completely. (I propped a wooden spoon against the “light-on” switch to keep it off and the door open.)

5.  In the bowl of the standing mixer, beat the cream with the confectioners' sugar until firm. Remove the cooled meringues from the parchment paper. Spread the whipped cream between the layers and stack them. Refrigerate or freeze the cake overnight. Cut into wedges and serve at room temperature. Garnish with chocolate shavings before serving.

Gingersnap Icebox Cake with Lemon Whipped Cream

Oh hey, hi, happy 2012.  Hope you weren’t visiting this blog to reaffirm any sort of recent personal declarations to observe weeks upon abstemious weeks of self-restraint and moderation. Well, because cake. This cake. It’s a no-brainer way out of your resolutions and an ascetic January. I’ve had high mind to make a gingersnap icebox cake for awhile now, but the opportunity was never quite golden enough to warrant sculpting 80 cookies into a creamy, tremendous tower until New Year’s came ‘round the corner. Our house – a lovely balance between comfortable chillage and devilry – elected to have an end-of-year Paper Moon bash coupled with a birthday party for our beautiful and inspiring talent of a friend, Pierrette.

The evening kicked off with a square dance in the dining room and live fiddling – led by my tarty partner in crime and friends from Kentucky and North Carolina – and was followed by relatively mellow mingling before evolving into a DJ-powered night of swilling and smooching. There was a photo booth and a kissing booth, demureness and debauchery, and generally all registers of revelry were met with a birthday backdrop.

Which brings us back to this cake! If you've had icebox cake before then you need not be persuaded, but if you're new to the dessert, it's a giant layer cake of cookies that softens in the fridge for some hours before it's cut into slices and served. The cream turns buttery, the cookies cakey, and it really is the pinnacle of celebration desserts. Happy 2012, y'all. May your year be full of health (likely found elsewhere) and oodles of new, delicious recipes (come back for more!).

Gingersnap Icebox Cake!

Makes about 85 cookies, or enough for one 77-cookie, 11-layer cake, with a handful of leftover snaps

The cookie recipe is very, very similar to the one that is all over this here blog. The spice and sugar profiles are somewhat different, as is the amount of baking soda, though only barely. The major difference is one of technique: this cookie dough is refrigerated first and baked from firm rounds instead of scoops; I think that this might play a role in the cookie's snappy-ness. Feel free to experiment with the Tanglewood classic too!

For the cookies

Adapted and doubled from Smitten Kitchen

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon table salt
2 heaping tablespoons ground ginger
2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
4 sticks (16 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
2 large egg

2/3 cup unsulphured molasses

1.  In a large bowl, mix flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and ground white pepper. In a separate large bowl, beat soft butter and sugars with an electric mixer on medium until light and fluffy, about three minutes. Add egg and molasses and beat until just combined. Give it a stir or several with a rubber spatula to make sure everything is incorporated, then heap dough upon some plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour, until firm.

2.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Using a small cookie scoop or other device, roll roughly two teaspoons of dough into a round ball. Place on parchment-lined cookie sheet, and continue for rest of dough, spacing dough balls two inches apart. Bake for 13 to 15 minutes. I opted for 13, and 15 should make them pretty snappy. Allow cookies to cook on sheets for a few minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack where they'll continue to harden. Let cook completely before assembling cake. Leftover cookies will keep for a week covered in an airtight container, though they will soften a bit each day. 

For the whipped cream
3 cups heavy whipping cream
5 tablespoons granulated sugar, or more to taste
3 teaspoons lemon zest


1.  When cookies have cooled, prepare whipped cream. In a clean glass or metal bowl, beat whipping cream, sugar, and zest with an electric mixer on medium until soft peaks form. Taste for sweetness. If you're satisfied, beat just a bit more until peaks and "medium" and just hold their shape. Do not make ahead.


For the assembly
1.  On a plate or serving platter, make a circle of six cookies with one in the middle. Spread a half-cup of cream on top, leaving about a quarter-inch or so of un-creamed cookie border. Top with your next circle of cookies, then one-half cup of whipped cream; repeat for whole cake, ending with a final layer of cream for a total of 11 cookie layers.


2.  Cover with plastic wrap and place cake in the fridge for eight to 12 hours or overnight; this one hung out in the icebox for ten hours and was plenty soft. One way to keep the wrap from mussing the cream is to place a few toothpicks around the perimeter and drape the plastic over those instead of putting it directly on the cream. Top with a lemon twist or a pile of slivered candied ginger and cut into slices to serve.