‘The Pioneer Woman’ Star Ree Drummond’s Sunny Lemon and Berry Icebox Cake Is Your Easy, No-Bake Solution to Dessert Tonight
You probably have all the ingredients for the ultimate hot summer night dessert: The Pioneer Woman star Ree Drummond’s Lemon and Berry Icebox Cake. With no baking involved, it’s light and just sweet enough for dessert.
What you’ll need to make Drummond’s fun Lemon and Berry Icebox Cake
Made with almost-always-on-hand pantry items, this old-fashioned cake’s (full recipe and video here) ingredients are heavy cream, powdered sugar, vanilla, lemon sandwich cream cookies, raspberry preserves, fresh raspberries, blueberry preserves, fresh blueberries, and fresh mint leaves.
Special kitchen tools you’ll need include a hand mixer and a 10-inch springform pan.
How to put this cake together
Drummond starts by making whipped cream using a hand mixer by combining the cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla in a bowl until it’s “really nice and billowy,” she said in the Food Network video for this recipe. The vanilla the Food Network personality uses is clear, which she says is great “whenever I want the mixture that I’m making to stay really bright-white.”
The “fun part with any icebox cake,” the mother of five says, “is to build it.” Using a springform pan allows you to easily take the cake out of the pan after it’s been in the refrigerator, or to use the old-time phrase, the icebox.
A third of the whipped cream is placed in the bottom of the pan and smoothed out. A layer of the lemon sandwich cookies is placed on the cream, followed by the raspberry jam (“just spread it out to the edges”). On top of the jam go the fresh raspberries (“save a few for the garnish”), and then the layers are repeated: whipped cream, lemon cookies, and this time the blueberry jam followed by the fresh blueberries. Finally, the rest of the whipped cream goes on the very top, with a smattering of the remaining fresh berries.
The cake is refrigerated for “a few hours” until it’s all set.
What home cooks had to say about Drummond’s Icebox Cake
Most of the reviews for The Pioneer Woman star were positive, but nearly all had adjustments they felt made it a bit better.
One home cook suggested omitting the cookies entirely and freezing the cake: “Made this yesterday and let it set up overnight in the fridge. The cake was extremely soft and kind of a mess to serve. It was too sweet for us with the lemon cookies so if I make it again I would use a cookie that isn’t a sandwich cream. I also wonder if it could be frozen?”
“I liked it but I didn’t like the lemon cookies; next time I would make it with graham crackers,” said another reviewer.
Yet another home cook went ahead and froze their icebox cake – and loved it: “So good! Made it with a few change-ups—I used only strawberry preserves and used both sliced strawberries and raspberries. I froze the leftovers, and it is so good frozen!”
If you haven’t decided what you want for dessert tonight, Ree Drummond’s Lemon and Berry Icebox Cake is quick, fun to make, and a classic for good reason.
