It is insanely hot and one of these amazing icebox cakes is our only hope

We are in the dog days of summer, which means that basically if you’re north of the equator, you are probably baking like cookies right now.

Speaking of dessert, sometimes it seems like something cold and sweet is the only thing that will make you feel better about the fact that it’s a hundred bajillion degrees outside right now. We’re sure you’ve had your fill of ice cream and popsicles at this point, which is why we would like to present to you a delicious alternative …(drumroll please)… the icebox cake.

“And praytell, what is an icebox cake?” you may be asking at this point?

The original take on the dessert was chocolate wafers cemented together with whipped cream, and tossed in the icebox overnight in olden-timey days when fridges were called iceboxes, where the wafers soaked up the moisture of the whipped cream and thus could be served the next day in slices, where you could see the refreshingly chilly dessert in all its layered glory.

First introduced to America during World War I, Nabisco popularized the recipe by placing it on the back of its chocolate wafer boxes in the 1930s.

Here’s Smitten Kitchen‘s contemporary take on the retro treat:

Of course, you can fancy up the recipe a little. Check out what Smitten Kitchen did with a chocolate peanut butter icebox cake:

And Brown Eyed Baker, whose grandmother used to put a graham cracker and vanilla pudding version of the icebox cake on the Sunday dinner table, gives us a modern twist on grandma’s recipe by replacing graham crackers with Double Stuff Oreos and the vanilla pudding with cheesecake-flavored pudding, giving the world the gift that is Oreo Cheesecake Icebox Cake.

All hail the icebox cake, the dessert that just might get us through these final dog days of summer.