Back when I was a kid....

....my mom used to make a great cake for our family birthday celebrations which became a tradition for many years. It's called an Ice Box Log Cake and it's a super simple cake made with Nabisco's Famous  Chocolate Wafers  (super thin chocolate cookies) and homemade whipped cream (with a touch of vanilla and sugar.)  

Heavenly... 

...and so easy.  You make spread generous amounts of the cream on each cookie and set them aside in little stacks.  Then you assemble the stacks on their sides into a log and cover with cream.  Once your put it in the refrigerator to chill, the cream moistens and expands the cookies into soft yummy cake. (Told you it was easy.)  The neat thing is that when you cut the cake on a diagonal it looks like this...

It's like eating the lightest, fluffiest, tastiest cookies and cream cake. (It has an Oreo taste.)

I knew I'd be making a big birthday cake and cupcakes for Gianna's party, but I wanted a little something special for her actual birthday.  I started doing some research and discovered that there are MANY people who grew up enjoying this wonderful cake in the 60's and 70's.  The one complaint is that the wafers are super hard to find. You can order them on the internet, but I understand there are a lot of broken cookies and you have to order an entire case - which is much more than I need or want to spend. 

The more I started thinking about how much time and/or money I might waste in search of these chocolate wafers, the more inspired I became to see if anyone had a copycat recipe for them.  Oh how I love Google!  I found the recipe here and I had all the ingredients at home - so it made things so much easier. The recipe for the Icebox cake is here. (You can add a little sugar to the whipping cream to sweeten it a bit.)

I didn't tell my parents I was making this cake, so I think they were really surprised that I was able to resurrect such a memorable part of our family history.  It was my brother's favorite cake growing up (mine too) but he's been working in Florida, so he didn't get to see/eat it.  Don't worry Uncle Vinnie, I'll make you one when you come back.

Now we have a new Lewis Family Tradition!

Two thumbs up from the three year old!