There are a lot of cookies that we could write love sonnets about, like these brown butter and toffee chocolate chip cookies, or these sophisticated tahini guys. But there are times when homemade isn’t best, and store-bought Nilla Wafers are the only thing that will do. Although we aren’t about to suggest putting a plate of them out at your holiday cookie swap later this year, they are the only option for classic desserts like banana pudding.
In the BA Test Kitchen, we tried using generic vanilla cookies for our new Blackberry Icebox Cake. It did not go well. Nilla Wafers are the Heinz Ketchup of the cookie aisle—the brand is synonymous with the product. The texture is both crispy and aerated, and as they nestle into a bed of whipped cream or pudding, Nilla Wafers hydrate to create dissolve-in-your-mouth crumbs, not wet mush like other brands. It’s our platonic ideal of a vanilla wafer cookie.
But sometimes you don’t use a whole box at once, or you just want to find new ways to get more Nilla Wafers in your life. So in an afternoon sugar-dreaming haze, senior associate food editor Molly Baz and I brainstormed a list of 17 ways to use Nilla Wafers in almost every dessert this summer. Here we go:
1. Make a press-in crust for coconut cream pie or banana cream pie with Nilla Wafers instead of graham crackers.
2. Crumble it over an ice cream sundae, like this brown butter cornbread and blackberry situation.
3. Substitute cookies for sponge cake in a trifle. It’ll be kind of like banana pudding but with berries in an epic layered situation. Bonus: There’s wine and custard involved.
4. Roll ice pops or ice cream bars in crushed wafers.
5. Crumble onto soft serve. You’re not making that at home, so sneak in a little baggie and BYONW.
6. Make an Eton Mess with wafers instead of meringue. They’re both crumbly!
7. Sprinkle some crumbs into ice cream cakes instead of chocolate. Or use both.
8. This would also improve other icebox cakes, like this blueberry lemon one!
9. And ice cream pies!
10. Make teeny tiny ice cream sandwiches for kids (or for portion control at a party), using a melon baller as the ice cream scoop.
11. Crumble some over top of simple berries and whipped cream—it elevates it juuust enough.
12. Make baby s’mores!
13. Dip them in caramel and chocolate for something like a Twix bar.
14. Sandwich marshmallow fluff in between cookies and dip in chocolate for a Mallomar-esque treat.
15. For a nostalgic, faux-fancy plated dessert, swoosh softened ice cream across a plate and top with a little pile of Nilla Wafer crumbs.
16. Blitz some wafers into ice cream with milk for a milkshake, or sans milk up for a homemade Dairy Queen Blizzard.
17. Dip them into peanut butter, chocolate, or frosting, and eat them standing up in your kitchen. Happy summer sugar rush!
