Cooking desserts covers a large area of kitchen work. I cook all the time, but my favorite times are when I don’t have to turn on the stove or the oven to make a great treat for my family.

My family loves strawberries and on a hot summer day, for a nice family cookout you may want to try this recipe. I call it Strawberry Icebox Cake. It’s made with fresh picked strawberries, graham cracker crumb crust, whipped cream, and a strawberry glaze.

Start by getting together the following ingredients:

• 1 Qt fresh picked strawberries
• 1 tub frozen whipped topping (thawed)
• 2 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1/4 cup butter or margarine
• 1 bag strawberry glaze
• 8×8 square dish

Method

Begin by washing and removing the stems and any bad spots on your strawberries. Quarter them and set them aside in a bowl. If you like smaller bites of the fruit, you can cut them even smaller. This is a personal choice. Open the strawberry glaze and pour over the strawberries. Mix them together until all the strawberries have a nice coating of the glaze on them. You can refrigerate this until you are ready to put it on your crust. Do not sugar your strawberries. This will create a liquefied juice that will soak into your crust and make your cake unmanageable when serving.

For the crust you are going to want to melt your butter. Then place the butter and 2 cups of the graham cracker crumbs in the square dish. Mix until the crumbs stick together. If more butter is needed, then simply melt more butter and only use a teaspoon full at a time to assure you are not getting the crust too moist. Pack the crumbs and butter mixture firmly onto the bottom only of your dish. This will harden and make a crust. If you wanted to be sure your crust is going to turn hard, you can bake it in a 350-degree oven for about 10 minutes and then let it cool before adding your strawberry mixture.

Place your strawberry mixture on the crust and spread it to the corners. Cover this with your thawed whipped topping. Now take the remaining graham cracker crumbs and sprinkle over the top of the whipped topping. Refrigerate over night or at least 2 hours. Extra strawberries can be used as garnish for the top of the cake. Simply cut them in half and lay them cut side down in the whipped topping. In this case you would not want to sprinkle more graham cracker crumbs over the top.

You could actually make this with just about any fruit. Blueberries would of course require a different type of glaze as would another type of fruit, but the preparations are the same and it makes a beautiful presentation when a twig of mint is added to the plate.

Cut into squares and serve for a delicious cool treat that your family will love!
Enjoy!