05 February 2008

you're a star!


quite often our taste buds react to our memories. mmmmmmm. this is one of those triggers: icebox cake. when i was a kid, my mother prepared this most easy of desserts, professing that she was not a baker. she would stack chocolate wafer cookies on their tangential ends, slathering each 'next' one with sweetened whipped cream, continuing until she had formed a log of about 20 cookies. she would repeat two or three times more, stacking the logs one beside the other, then once again coated the entire 'cake' with the remaining whipped cream. yummmm!

my version is pretty similar to this premise, but it's all in the details baby! my icebox mini cupcakes are individual portions topped with a powdered sugar etoile (really just a cutout made from a piece of paper - using an x-acto knife, i trim away a star shape, leaving a void in it's place which gets centered over the round wafer tower, dusted with confectioner's sugar in a sieve, et voila - so sweet!).

the recipe: whip 2 cups heavy cream with 3 tablespoons sugar and a drop of vanilla (the real stuff, don't cheat!) - the cream should be thick like canned shaving cream [you can spoon it into a ziploc sac, squeezing it down towards one corner, and snip that corner to use as a decorating bag]. place one chocolate wafer on the center of a plate, securing it with a dab of cream. place another cookie on top, pipe out a dollop of cream into the center, and press (gently) another cookie on top of that, until there are 6 or 7 layers. place the 'cupcake' in the refrigerator overnight, so the crisp wafers have time to absorb the moisture in the beaten cream, marrying them together. the end result will be very cake-like indeed. before serving, decorate, spoon out some fresh berries, and enjoy!

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