A Sweet Summery Reminder

I don’t know if you remember, but a couple years back, Icebox cakes were the thing. From Food and Wine to Redbook, dessert lovers and mommy bloggers extolled the virtues of these no-bake sweet treats. I never really got on the bandwagon, being more of a savory gal myself, but lately, after cutting back on my alcohol consumption, I find myself leaning more into the sweet side of things. Oh, and I got my first cavity. Funny how that works…

Earlier in the summer I made this Banana icebox cake and it turned out fiiiinee. It may be because I am not a huge fan of bananas or Nilla wafers, but I didn’t love it. I didn’t feel guilty eating it though (there’s fruit!) and it seems like something that can be easily modified to taste. Chocolate cookies, strawberries and jam instead of banana. The possibilities are endless!

Camping and other summer excursions got in the way of further experimentation until recently, when I discovered Nigella Lawson’s Meringue Gelato Cake with Chocolate Sauce.  It languished on my Trello board for about a month before I got around to making it a few weeks ago. The Summer heat (and smoke, thank god!) had dissipated so the recipe didn’t feel as necessary as it had been just a few weeks earlier but, boy was it a treat! It had the consistency of very fluffy ice cream, flecked with barely sweet chocolate and covered in a drizzle of boozy chocolate sauce. The store-bought meringue cookies (I ordered these on Amazon because they don’t seem to be a common item in local grocery stores), crushed up and combined with whipped cream, provided and very airy consistency and I felt like I was eating a barely sweetened cloud, studded with crunchy chocolaty bits. That by itself would have been just grand, but blanketed in a lovely warm chocolate sauce spiked with dark rum and Kahlua…heaven! I highly recommend this dessert any time of year and, at the tail end of summer on a cool Friday evening, it was perfection; a reminder of summer warmth and and a hint of cozy Fall days ahead.