Famous Chocolate Wafer Ice Box Cake from Nanny’s 1937 Nabisco Cook Booklet

My Nanny, Nell and the recipe I used from her 1937 Nabisco cook booklet.

Growing up, we ate lunch at my Nanny’s almost every Sunday after church. I remember everything about her house. I remember the fantastic, kitschy pink tiled bathroom that smelled of her pink Dove Beauty Bars that she used religiously. I remember her golden yellow brocade, mid-century sofa in the living room and which cabinet she kept her bingo game in. In my minds eye, I can still see the television that sat on a metal rolling cart in her den, her big Famous Amos Cookies tin that sat on top of her refrigerator and the exercise pulley-thingy attached to the back of my mamas old bedroom door. I’d tangle myself up in it more times than I’d like to admit. In that room was a drawer full of my grandfathers things, his pipe, pictures and other doo-dads. I remember vividly the colors and smells of her house which is truly miraculous because half the time, I can not tell you what I did yesterday! But what I remember the most was her huge, wooden stereo credenza and all the vinyl records she had. My favorite was a Nancy Sinatra 45 record “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” and that’s just what I’d do! I’d dance to that song in my little zip up brown boots before we ate lunch. I did the “Bunny Hop” many times to one of my mamas 45 records and when I was older, I discovered Barbara Streisand listening to Nanny’s Yentl soundtrack LP. I fell in love with the song “Papa Can You Hear Me?” at 8 or 9 years old. So dramatic! We listened to Englebert Humperdinck, Nanny’s boyfriend, not really but she loved him so we teasingly called him that. We new Dan Tanna was her REAL boyfriend, wink-wink.

Now, Nanny fixed us lunch and I was always so excited to see what she had made for dessert! We always had a congealed salad, macaroni and cheese and something sweet to finish lunch with. Among my favorites were the cookie and whipped cream stacks she’d make us. See, I didn’t realize until I was an adult that Nanny had taken a refrigerator cake recipe using Nabisco’s Famous Chocolate Wafers and deconstructed it really. The recipe was in one of her Nabisco cooking booklets. It called for sandwiching the cookies together with the whipped cream in rows on a dish. You’d repeat this until you essentially had formed a loaf of sandwiched cookies that you would ice like a cake with the remaining whipped cream. It’d chill in the fridge and you’d serve it in slices like you would a cake. Nanny did her own thing. She would make little, individual cookie towers for each of us. Chocolate wafer cookie, top with whipped cream, top with cookie and repeat. I think we each got 4-5 cookies in our own tower. It was so simple but it truly was the most delicious dessert ever and we all got our own which made you feel so special!

So today, I’m taking my Nanny’s Nabisco recipe booklet and making the Famous Chocolate Wafer refrigerator cake and I’ll do it while listening to the “Yentl” soundtrack! Here we go!

My ingredients: