**The Art of Creating a Stunning Icebox Cake**

Bought ginger cookies are the perfect starting point for this beautiful icebox cake. They're nice and thin, crisp, and delicious - just what we need to tie in with the crystallized ginger that's in the puree. And don't worry if they break; the beauty of an icebox cake is that it doesn't matter, as you won't be able to see any imperfections once it's assembled.

To give our cake a little structure and make it easier to serve, we'll place a layer of cookies on the bottom. I like to use this technique because it not only adds texture but also helps keep everything in place. Now that we have our base, let's move on to the next layer - our beautiful raspberry sauce. An offset spatula will be our friend here as we carefully pour three-quarters of a cup of fresh raspberries into our cake. We're going to stand them up so when we slice the cake, we'll get those lovely pieces with visible raspberries.

Next, we'll add two cups of caramel whipped cream. I like to dollop it around because this is where things start to get fun! You don't have to be precise if you want to; just throw it in a piping bag and pipe over the cake if you prefer. However, I'm opting for a more relaxed approach today - measuring out the ingredients so each layer is roughly the same thickness.

**The Making of an Icebox Cake**

We're starting with half a cup of our caramel whipped cream, followed by another half cup for this layer (and just a little extra). To build our cake, we'll repeat this process two more times. It's like making a lasagna out of cookies - each layer gets a bit smaller, but the flavors meld together beautifully. The moisture from the cream and sauce will seep into those cookies, softening them and giving us that perfect cake-like texture.

Since this is our last layer, we're not measuring anything; I just want to use it up! The combination of flavors will be sublime, with the ginger subtly evident from the puree and the sweetness of the cream and fruit balancing everything out. And that's it - our icebox cake is complete!

**Finishing Touches**

To wrap our cake in a small serving size, I'll just grab two sides (or not, as I'm doing solo today!). As we take our first slice, notice how beautiful the presentation is. The cream and sauce have created a stunning mosaic of flavors, with each bite yielding to a soft, gooey center.

**Adding a Pop of Color**

To finish our cake off, I'll simply cut some fresh gooseberries - their tartness cuts through the richness of the whipped cream perfectly. We can arrange them artfully on top, creating a pop of color that's almost too pretty to eat (almost!).

And that's how we create an icebox cake that's not only delicious but also visually stunning. The best part? It's incredibly easy to make - just remember to trust your instincts and have fun with it!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat'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 a nice 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 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 anything in here just berries because basically the heat is going to 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 till 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 going to 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 we might have lumps so i'm adding it to my hot jam in a little bowl this is a slurry and then i'm going to 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 it becomes clear again look at that can 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 could 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 because 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 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 going to turn on the heat and i'm going to let it do its thing i'm not going to touch it i'm not really going to swirl it until things get started i'm just going to let it 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 it's so much more delicious when you make it from from scratch see that color it's pretty dark now but imagine when you add your heavy cream it's going to get lighter so you want it to be nice and dark it is going to seize a tiny bit when you add the cream and you just cook it for another couple 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's my caramel look at that did 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 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 washing cream whip i just love dairy so much let's see no that's a nice soft peak see how the little peak moves see that she bends over a little um 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 it'll sort of get a little more fluid okay i have this beautiful 8 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 going to 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 kick out when it's finished like that and i didn't butter the pan when i put this in because we're going to 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 wanted to sort of tie it in with that beautiful crystallized ginger that's in the puree don't stress if they break what'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 going to put some of our beautiful raspberry sauce i think an offset spatula is going to be your friend here and now we'll put three quarters of a cup of fresh raspberries but i'm going to 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 yum 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 we're just spreading this out evenly we are going to 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 have 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 layer i'm not even going to measure i'm just going to 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 oh yum and that's it easy peasy now we just have to wrap it up 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 that 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 going to 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 because 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 we do it feels fun i want to cut these i like how how pretty they are how red they are and they look so pretty on top 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 ah yeah look at that i'm gonna go right here because i want all those raspberries 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 precise ginger that's in the compote but then the fresh fruit sort of adds a little more texture to all that softness i mean it's pretty good i think this is the perfect summer dish because you get to use a ton of fresh fruit all the 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 buddies now do i have an ice box i have a refrigerator what is an ice box just like with a literal block of icewhat'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 a nice 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 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 anything in here just berries because basically the heat is going to 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 till 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 going to 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 we might have lumps so i'm adding it to my hot jam in a little bowl this is a slurry and then i'm going to 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 it becomes clear again look at that can 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 could 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 because 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 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 going to turn on the heat and i'm going to let it do its thing i'm not going to touch it i'm not really going to swirl it until things get started i'm just going to let it 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 it's so much more delicious when you make it from from scratch see that color it's pretty dark now but imagine when you add your heavy cream it's going to get lighter so you want it to be nice and dark it is going to seize a tiny bit when you add the cream and you just cook it for another couple 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's my caramel look at that did 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 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 washing cream whip i just love dairy so much let's see no that's a nice soft peak see how the little peak moves see that she bends over a little um 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 it'll sort of get a little more fluid okay i have this beautiful 8 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 going to 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 kick out when it's finished like that and i didn't butter the pan when i put this in because we're going to 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 wanted to sort of tie it in with that beautiful crystallized ginger that's in the puree don't stress if they break what'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 going to put some of our beautiful raspberry sauce i think an offset spatula is going to be your friend here and now we'll put three quarters of a cup of fresh raspberries but i'm going to 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 yum 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 we're just spreading this out evenly we are going to 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 have 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 layer i'm not even going to measure i'm just going to 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 oh yum and that's it easy peasy now we just have to wrap it up 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 that 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 going to 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 because 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 we do it feels fun i want to cut these i like how how pretty they are how red they are and they look so pretty on top 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 ah yeah look at that i'm gonna go right here because i want all those raspberries 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 precise ginger that's in the compote but then the fresh fruit sort of adds a little more texture to all that softness i mean it's pretty good i think this is the perfect summer dish because you get to use a ton of fresh fruit all the 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 buddies now do i have an ice box i have a refrigerator what is an ice box just like with a literal block of ice\n"