How Ree Drummond Turns A Frozen Pound Cake Into A Gorgeous Gourmet Dessert

When you have the time, creating something entirely from scratch can be a delightful, even therapeutic, experience. But there are certainly times when we welcome shortcuts. Even recipe pros like Ree Drummond find themselves in these situations. She fully endorses using frozen pound cakes to get the dessert job done. Drummond has her own homemade recipe for the curiously named confection, but she utilizes a store-bought version to create her layered blackberry icebox cake. These kinds of vintage cakes are perfect for hot summer days because there's no oven time involved.

Once it thaws, Drummond trims the domed top off the pound cake, crumbles it up, and toasts the sweet crumbs in a skillet with melted butter until they're toasty and browned. These will be used to garnish the finished cake. Next, she slices the pound cake lengthwise into three even layers. To build the cake, she lines the foil pan that the pound cake came in with plastic wrap so that the cake can easily be removed later. Drummond places one layer of cake at the bottom and tops it with ⅓ of a quick compote she's made using halved fresh blackberries, blackberry jam, and a little lemon zest. She then layers on some whipped cream and builds two more of the same layers using the rest of the cake and compote before finishing with whipped cream.

Drummond then lightly wraps the top with plastic wrap and chills the cake overnight. To serve, she unwraps the cake, sprinkles the top with toasted pound cake crumbs and fresh blackberries, and cuts it into slices. The colors pop on this beautiful, cold, delicious dessert.

Drummond's smart dessert shortcut using store-bought pound cake can be made with any one of summer's delicious seasonal fruits — or a combination of them. Strawberries, raspberries, peaches, apricots, and cherries would all work well. But building a layered cake is just one option for using frozen pound cake. When you cut it into slices, you can make beautiful trifles. Use custard powder to make an effortless English trifle that everyone will love. You can also cut the pound cake into cubes and make dessert kabobs. Just skewer the cubes with fresh fruit and mint leaves and drizzle everything with chocolate sauce or alongside vanilla ice cream.

You could also make a dessert panzanella. Grill or toast slices of pound cake and cut them into cubes, then toss them with berries and peaches that have been macerated with some sugar, which will create a syrup that will taste great when tossed with the cake. Or, take slices of grilled pound cake and top them with scoops of vanilla gelato and limoncello for a sweet but grown up dessert.