Cranberry Chocolate Icebox Cake

Holiday season is in full swing, so for the rest of the month I’ll be sharing some dishes that are cause for celebration- from drinks to desserts to apps. Let’s start with a dessert and this cranberry chocolate icebox cake.

It’s been hard for me to get going into Christmas this year if I’m honest.  My tree has been up and my favorite tunes have been lingering in the background but the last few weeks have been so busy it’s been hard to focus.  Plus, as I was about to head to Florida this week, the hullabaloo of it all became too much for Crawley Cat and he had a bit of a stress flare up – and unfortunately I had to leave him in the hands of another to recover. 

So send good thoughts up to Michigan for the C-man.

Anyway, back to this cake. The idea came up because I had some extra cranberry curd lingering from the earl grey cranberry ice cream and while I initially leaned towards doing something like a parfait or a trifle, I settled on an icebox cake because some classics never die.

Except this almost did! Anyone who grew up eating some iteration of this cake knows that the base should be Nabisco’s famous chocolate wafers- but they discontinued them! And as I scored the shelves of three supermarkets to come up with an acceptable alternative, I settled on chocolate graham crackers (which I also had to go to two different stores to find, oddly enough).  I almost gave up and used regular honey grahams but both Mom and L strongly pushed me towards the chocolate. And I’m glad they did.

The glue that holds those chocolate grahams together is the leftover cranberry curd folded into real whipped cream. Plain whipped cream coats the outside, and sugared fresh cranberries gives it all that holiday sparkly shine.

Once the curd is made, this comes together in five minutes and an overnight and makes one loaf-size cake.

Don’t have curd? Loosen up your favorite seed-free jam as a substitute.

Isn’t it pretty? 

Style AND substance! And if you want some extra pizzaz, drizzle some chocolate over the top.  No one would be mad about it!