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No Bake Lime Cake
Impressive multi-layer icebox cake with filling from limes, heavy cream, and sweetened condensed milk. Perfect for summer, or for those without an oven.
Confession, I do not own an oven. It may sound weird, but Asian kitchen is not commonly stocked with one. So, how do we make our desserts, you ask. Well, most of the time, steaming is involved. Then there are quite a lot of deep frying and stewing too. In fact, only when making western desserts such as cakes or cookies do we scramble for an oven. But I so want to make a cake for my Mom’s birthday, and I want it to resemble a western cake, with cream and all that, basically, the works!
So on I went to search for a recipe that can produce a cake without the need to bake, and pray it is not a pie, but a good honest layered cake. After searching for one such elusive recipe, I settled for this one, with minor tweaks since this is after all in Indonesia, and I have to make do with some of the ingredients, right? The cake turns out to be so amazingly good I half mind want to make another batch for myself. ♥
The original recipe claims that the cake can be made in 10 minutes. I find that a pretty tall order, but maybe I am still a noob? Perhaps it can be done (barely) if you use pre-squeezed lime juice since washing, cutting, and squeezing the lime to get the required amount of juice took some time for me.
No Bake Lime Cake
Ingredients
- 500 ml whipping cream (I used Elle & Vire whipping cream)
- 2 cans (385 gram each) sweet condensed milk (Indonesia: susu kental manis)
- 1/2 cup lime juice (Indonesia: air jeruk nipis)
- square cream/butter crackers (try using Saltine crackers, or old school Khong Guan brand crackers)
- Garnish
- lime zest
- Tools
- Mixing bowl
- Whisk
- 20cm x 20cm x 5 cm pan
Instructions
- Combine whipping cream and sweet condensed milk in a mixing bowl.
- Add lime juice and whisk until thickened, about 1 minute.
- Spread a layer of cream on the pan. Top with a single layer of crackers. Repeat, alternate between cream and filling, and finish with a layer of cream. You should be able to fill the entire pan if you are using the same size of pan as mine.
- Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, overnight is best.
- Cut into slices and serve with a sprinkle of lime zest.
Comments
Everyone should have oven-less treats in their recipe repertoire; broken stoves, hot summer days, dorms, you name it. I've been collecting holiday-style stove-top recipes for years now thanks to one particularly unpleasant apartment oven experience (reinforced by time in Asia as well), but I've never really done ice-box cakes (always seemed like a midwestern or southern thing hahaha)
Anyway, I had just the right ingredients, and since it's not feeding a party, I just halved it and set it in a loaf pan. It fit 8 saltine crackers per layer, and I used 3 layers (about 1 pack in one of those long boxes). I used 3 limes for the juice. When I mixed up the cream, I was worried how drippy it was, like maybe I should have pulled out the electric mixer, but once the juice was added, it started to get thick. I stuck mine in the freezer, and it definitely firmed up- it kind of makes me think of lime sherbet or gelato, very rich. Like key lime pie, but far easier!
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