Super Easy Mother’s Day Refrigerator Cake

For the cooking-impaired, I found a super-easy No-Bake Strawberry Icebox Cake that looks like you spend hours in the kitchen. But, seriously, you could get your 4-year-old and your 6-year-old to help you, if you don’t mind whipped cream-covered fingers. It would make a fabulous Mother’s Day treat, and it looks fancy enough to take to a party.

But wait, there’s more. You can make it a few hours or even a day ahead, and it tastes even better! In fact, you’re supposed to let it sit in the frig for a few hours.

So, you want the recipe, right? Well, there are several versions flitting about the Internet, but here’s one that I messed with. You can also cut this recipe in half.

Strawberry Icebox Cake

• Two large containers (about 2 lbs total) fresh strawberries, washed, hulled and cut into thin slices
• 3 ½ cups heavy cream. I guess you could use whipped topping for this, but do you really want to? Why not use the real thing?
• ½ cup powdered sugar. There’s not a lot of sugar in this, so if you want it to be sweeter, add more sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 sleeves (about 24-28 whole crackers) graham crackers

Using a hand mixer or a stand mixer, whip the cream until it holds stiff peaks. Add the confectioners sugar and vanilla, whip to combine.

Spread a small spoonful of the whipped cream on the bottom of a 9×13 inch baking pan or a platter about the same size. You just need a base, so if you want the whole effect of the layers, use a platter or a baking sheet covered with foil.

Lay down 6 graham crackers over the whipped cream that you just spread out. They just need to be barely touching, not overlapping. Cover the top of the crackers with 1/4 of the whipped cream, and then a single layer of the sliced strawberries. Do this three more times until you have 4 layers of graham crackers.

You can garnish it by drizzling chocolate ganache over the top, if you like. To make ganache, just heat about ¼ cup of heavy cream in a pan to simmer (don’t boil), remove from heat and add chocolate chips and stir until melted. Use a spoon to drizzle over the cake.

Refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or until the crackers have softened completely.

I suppose you could use other berries, such as blueberries for this cake. Or you could make a red, white and blue one for the Fourth of July by alternating strawberries and blueberries.

This is a fun summertime cake to make with kids. They’ll like to help with the layering.