10 Old School No-Bake Desserts That Still Hold Up Today

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The 20th century saw an explosion of convenience foods that made it easy for home cooks to prepare consistent, delicious dishes. Foods like Jell-O, instant pudding, sweetened condensed milk, and ready-made marshmallows were welcomed into the kitchen, quickly becoming staples. But when electric home refrigerators became widely available, it truly changed how home cooks created their recipes. Instead of standing over a hot stove stirring milk for pudding, you could mix up cold milk and instant pudding — and then put it in the refrigerator for the next day. And for cooks that lived in warm locations, electric refrigerators made it possible to make the best summer desserts without turning on the oven and dealing with the extra heat.

Food manufacturers took full advantage of the technology and began advertising no-bake dessert recipes that used these convenience foods and the refrigerator. Many of these old-school no-bake desserts have remained favorites for decades, even with changes in some of the original ingredients. We looked through our favorite summer cookbooks and found 10 no-bake recipes that have been around the block a few times and are still just as popular today. We've got pies, cakes, cookies, and dessert salads, all designed to keep your kitchen cool and your tastebuds happy.

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Chocolate, peanut butter, and oatmeal no-bake cookies have gone by a lot of different names over the years: mudballs, boiled cookies, poodgies, raggedy robins, and preacher cookies (the story goes that a housewife could see the preacher down the road and have them finished by the time he knocked on her front door). And it's not clear exactly when or where they were invented. No-bake cookies in the U.S. became popular during the Great Depression when home cooks didn't have access to flour, eggs, or white cane sugar. There's evidence that this particular recipe appeared in newspapers in the early 1970s, but other sources date it back to sometime in the '50s. Whatever you call them, they've stayed so popular because they are fast, delicious, and fun to make.

Although these cookies are technically no-bake, they do require a little bit of cooking, but not enough to heat up your kitchen so we'll allow it. You bring sugar, butter, milk and cocoa powder to a boil and cook for two or three minutes, just enough for the mixture to melt together smoothly. Then it's just a case of adding peanut butter, old-fashioned rolled oats, salt, and vanilla, and stirring together before dropping spoonfuls of the dough on a cookie tray or parchment paper to cool. 

The cookies firm up as they cool. The chocolate and peanut butter recipe may be the platonic ideal of no-bake cookies, but there are so many variations you can try. Swap out the peanut butter in easy no-bake cookies with Nutella, or take the basic no-bake cookie recipe and add graham crackers.

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Is it an icebox pie or is it a Jell-O salad? Either way, this vintage dessert is still popular today because it combines salty and sweet with the pop of fresh strawberries. Plus, it's easy to make, though this one does require 10 minutes of oven time. But stay with us here, because the reason this dessert needs just a bit of heat is also the reason this dessert has stood the test of time. 

There are two versions of this recipe, but the crust is the same. It uses crushed pretzels instead of cookies or graham crackers like so many no-bake desserts, which makes this dish unique and tasty. But because the texture of pretzels is different than cookies, you need to add melted butter and a little sugar for taste and to help the crust come together and set up.

Once the crust is ready, you can turn it into an easy strawberry pretzel salad, which leans into the layers of crunchy, creamy, and fruity, almost like a cheesecake style of dessert. A cream cheese and whipped cream mixture goes on top of the crust, and then you add the strawberry Jell-O and fresh sliced strawberries layer on top. Or you can make a pie with a creamy filling made of sweetened condensed milk, cream cheese, and strawberry Jell-O powder, which gives the pie a delicate pink color. Either way, the dessert needs several hours in the fridge to set before serving.

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Icebox cakes use the magic of refrigeration and time to turn layers of cookies and a cream-based filling into a delicious cake. Though the recipe dates back earlier, it bcame popular in 1929, when Nabisco decided to take advantage of the growing popularity of home refrigerators. They printed an icebox cake recipe on the side of their Famous Chocolate Wafers box and in cookbooks printed by the company. This recipe has stayed incredibly popular with home cooks – there's even a Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers Fan Club Facebook group. When Nabisco announced in 2023 that it was discontinuing the Famous Chocolate Wafer, fans mourned. Sure, there are other chocolate cookies, but this chocolate wafer was made for icebox cakes.

Here's how to make icebox cake without the Famous Chocolate Wafers: Layer cookies with sweetened whipped cream, then cover and refrigerate for at least eight hours (overnight is even better). Top it with more whipped cream. As it sits in the fridge, the cookies soften so that you can slice and serve it like a cake. 

You can use another brand of chocolate wafer cookie, or you can take the icebox cake in a different direction and use shortbread, gingersnaps, lemon wafers, or even chocolate chip cookies. You could also top the icebox cake with chopped nuts, fresh fruit, chocolate syrup, or crushed cookies — whatever you like to go with your choice of cookies.

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This velvety rich no-bake chocolate pie is a riff on the French silk pie. The original French silk pie recipe was the winner of the 1951 Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest, but although you don't bake the assembled pie, you do need to bake the crust and cook the eggs and sugar together. The no-bake version is just as impressive and delicious, and makes the process of creating a cool and creamy chocolate dessert even easier because you don't have to turn your oven on at all.

The pie crust is made from chocolate cookies, like Oreos. The filling is essentially a chocolate ganache, which you can make with two ingredients: Pour heated heavy cream over chocolate chips, and whisk until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is completely smooth. For extra chocolate creaminess, you can mix whipped topping with cocoa powder and then stir that into the chocolate ganache. Pour the whole mixture into the chilled crust and let the pie set in the refrigerator for several hours in the refrigerator. When the pie is completely set, top with more whipped cream and chocolate shavings or crushed cookies. 

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Rice Krispies Treats are a time-honored no-bake dessert, but there's a twist on this treat that might be even more popular in some places. Scotcheroos start like a Rice Krispies Treat with a base of puffed rice cereal, but then you use sugar and corn syrup instead of marshmallows, add peanut butter to the mix, and top the whole thing off with melted chocolate and butterscotch. Once the mixture is chilled, it's easy to slice into little pieces. The result is almost candy bar-like, rich and decadent. 

Midwesterners claim the Scotcheroo as their own, if not by invention then by sheer devotion. You can find this vintage no-bake dessert at holiday parties, high school sports concession stands, bake sales, and church potlucks.

The recipe first appeared on the side of a Kellogg's Rice Krispies box in the 1960s. A Des Moines Register article quoted Iowa culinary history expert Darcy Dougherty Maulsby saying that in the mid-20th century, "sophisticated cooks were using convenience foods and processed foods and modern products. So taking a recipe off a box like that would show you were on the cutting edge." Another reason it gained popularity is that it was easy to make and didn't require any specialty ingredients — most cooks had everything they needed at home, and if they didn't, any grocery store would have them. While modern versions may tweak the recipe — for example, swapping in honey instead of corn syrup – many home cooks still swear by the original side-of-the-box recipe.

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Named after the classic grasshopper cocktail recipe, this bright green pie is a cool and minty (and slightly boozy) treat. If you're not familiar with the cocktail, it's a mixture of crème de menthe, crème de cacao and heavy cream. The original cocktail recipe was created by New Orleans restaurant owner Philibert Guichet for a cocktail competition held in 1918 in New York City. He took second place in the competition, and the grasshopper became so popular in New Orleans that it's still served at Tujague's Restaurant today.

The no-bake pie version of the grasshopper was probably created in the late 1950s or early '60s. The recipe may have first been published in a booklet created by the Knox Gelatin and Heublein Corials companies titled "High Spirited Desserts." It also appeared widely in newspapers and magazines during that time, where apparently it had to be clarified that no actual grasshoppers were used to make the pie.

The original no-bake grasshopper pie used gelatin (which is likely why Knox published the recipe), but the modern version uses marshmallows or marshmallow fluff instead. The pie is built on a cookie crust, usually Oreos, though a chocolate mint cookie is a favorite of people who want the extra mint flavor. The crème de menthe and crème de cacao are added to melted marshmallows, and then cold whipped cream is added. The whole mixture is poured over the cookie crust and gets stashed in the freezer for at least two hours or until set.

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Jell-O is a key ingredient in many no-bake desserts, and no list of vintage dishes is complete without some version of it. Jell-O salads may have a reputation as old-fashioned, but one type of Jell-O salad in particular really holds up today. Jell-O fluff is still popular — and in fact, it has even become a TikTok fad. 

This is the easiest no-bake dessert, and you can make it with only two ingredients: Jell-O powder and whipped topping. You mix the dry Jell-O powder with the whipped topping and let it chill in the refrigerator. As the Jello dissolves into the whipped cream, it flavors the whipped cream and turns it a pretty color. The result is light, sweet, and creamy, a perfect dessert any time of year.

It's the variations on Jell-O fluff that make it fun. You can add pudding, marshmallows, fruit, nuts, cream cheese, chocolate, cottage cheese, or Greek yogurt. Any flavor of Jell-O works, too. For example, mix strawberry Jell-O and cottage cheese, then fold in fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Or orange Jell-O and mandarin orange slices. If you'd rather use cream cheese than cottage cheese, try a recipe for orange Jell-O salad. If you want to use pudding, use the cook and serve style. Cook the pudding mix briefly with the Jell-O powder and water, then chill. Mix the chilled base with whipped topping, mini marshmallows, and fresh chopped fruit. 

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One of the hallmarks of no-bake desserts is that they rely on convenience ingredients. The no-bake pink lemonade pie uses a particular item that is unlike any other no-bake dessert in our list: frozen pink lemonade concentrate. Frozen juice concentrate is an World War II invention, with research funded by the U.S. government in order to get orange juice to the troops around the world. After the war, juice concentrate became a wildly popular convenience food for grocery shoppers. A tube of frozen orange juice concentrate was cheaper than a jug of fresh juice, and lasted far longer in the freezer than the jug did in the refrigerator.

Like most of the old-school no-bake recipes of this list, pink lemonade pie became popular in the 1960s. Like many convenience food manufacturers did to promote the use of their products, Eagle Brand, makers of condensed milk, published a recipe for Eagle Brand lemonade pie. At some point, they also created a pink lemonade pie recipe. The base is a cookie or graham cracker crust, filled with a mixture of sweetened condensed milk, cream cheese, and whipped topping combined with frozen pink lemonade concentrate. The color of the pie turns out a delicate pink, though you can also make the color more vibrant with a drop of food coloring.

No-bake pink lemonade pie is still popular, especially in families where the recipe has been passed down, but frozen juice concentrate can be harder to find in grocery stores these days. If you can't find it, some modern versions of this recipe use pink lemonade mix. 

Nothing conjures up the image of a vintage dessert more than the phrase "banana split." A soda shop favorite, this cold treat is a combination of ice cream, chocolate syrup, fruit, and nuts. It's definitely a little over the top, but also so much fun to eat. The banana split sundae was invented in 1904 by a drugstore "soda jerk" named David Evans Strickler and made popular by the students at a nearby college. The no-bake cake version of the banana split didn't show up until later. There's no agreed-to date for the first published no-bake banana split cake recipe; bakers note that they've been making it for decades, or it's one of those recipes that your mom or grandma has tucked away somewhere but nobody's sure exactly where it came from. 

No-bake banana split cake is an icebox (or refrigerator) cake, and like other icebox cakes, when this dessert sits for hours in the refrigerator, the crust softens into something with a cake-like texture. But instead of cookies, a no-bake banana split cake recipe uses a graham cracker crust instead of alternating layers of cookies and whipped cream. On top of the crust, spread a cream cheese and whipped cream filling followed by a layer of strawberries and bananas. For the top, add more whipped topping, plus chopped walnuts, maraschino cherries and a drizzle of chocolate sauce for the final banana split touches.

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First things first, this version of chocolate lasagna is not the popular one you'll find at Olive Garden, which is made from layers of rich chocolate cake sandwiched with chocolate mousse and topped with a chocolate sauce. No, for this chocolate lasagna you don't have to turn your oven on. And honestly, it's probably better for you, since chocolate lasagna is one of the unhealthiest things on the Olive Garden menu.

Chocolate lasagna takes its name not from the use of pasta, but from the layering effect. This no bake dessert is built on an Oreo cookie crust, then you layer a cream cheese and whipped cream filling with instant chocolate pudding and topped by a layer of whipped cream. 

The basic recipe is fantastic, but you can also give it your own twist. Add espresso powder to the cream cheese filling, and use a mocha pudding instead of plain chocolate. Add a layer of fresh strawberries. Top with chocolate shavings or fresh fruit. And while you can make it in a large pan and scoop out servings, chocolate lasagna is also a fun dessert to make as individual servings in fancy clear glasses. It's like a grown-up pudding cup.