Last week, America's Test Kitchen published this handy timeline of popular cakes throughout American history. I immediately fell in love with the weirdest of the bunch--the stained glass cake--and googled up the recipe.

A product of the 1950's, the stained glass cake is a much more colorful variation on your plain old icebox cake, which would often be made with chocolate wafers layered with whipped cream. Ideally, the cake is refrigerated for a long time, and the whipped cream glues everything together so it can be sliced. 

This cake takes the wafer cookies and replaces them with three colors of jello. Sounds better already, right?

Like lots of convenience foods from the 50's, it's intended to be made ahead and to be quick. It gets bonus points in my book because all the ingredients can be purchased at your corner bodega. 

The general process is super simple: 

*Make three kinds of jello in cake pans, then cut them up into cubes. I ended up butchering lots of my cubes because I'm lazy and let the jello set in mixing bowls. Learn from my mistake! 

*Make some whipped cream, and add  3/4 cup of pineapple juice mixed with a packet of unflavored gelatin to the finished cream. This is the secret to the whole thing, since the additional gelatin is what gives the whipped cream enough structure to later be sliced up. 

*Mix it all together! (below)

*Pour into your graham cracker crust (use a springform pan!) and let it set for a long time. You'll want to eat it immediately, but really, give it time. 

I didn't give it time, and this is the wobbly mess you'll end up with. Surprisingly delicious! The full recipe's over here!