Name: Eclair Cake
Prep time: 20 min
Total time: 620 min
Ingredients: 14.4 ounce box graham crackers, plain or honey (27 full sheets, 9 per layer); 6.8 ounces instant French Vanilla pudding ((two 3.4-ounce boxes)); 16 ounces Cool Whip, (thawed overnight in the refrigerator (two 8-ounce tubs)); 3 ½ cups cold whole milk; 16 ounces dark chocolate fudge frosting

A real eclair is three things: pastry, vanilla cream, chocolate over the top. This no bake eclair cake is the same idea but built in a pan, with no oven and no piping bag.

Taking only 20 minutes to put together, graham crackers go down in three layers with vanilla pudding filling between them and chocolate fudge frosting poured over the top.

A glass baking dish with an Eclair Cake sliced into squares, showcasing creamy filling and cracker layers beneath a rich chocolate topping. One piece is missing from the dessert, offering a tempting preview of this classic Eclair Cake Recipe. Items are blurred in the background.

This eclair cake has to be made the day before, which is why it turns up at so many potlucks and cookouts. There’s nothing left to do on the day except cut it.

Getting The Filling To Set

Every so often someone tells me their eclair cake didn’t set. They chilled it overnight, cut into it the next day, and got something closer to soup.

Three things decide it, and all of them happen before the first graham cracker goes in the pan.

Thaw the Cool Whip all the way through. Move it to the refrigerator the night before you’re making this recipe, rather than leaving it on the counter for an hour. A tub that’s still firm in the middle makes you overwork the filling.
Let the pudding thicken before the Cool Whip goes in. That’s what the five minute wait in the recipe is for. Thick pudding holds the whipped topping up. Loose pudding doesn’t, and once the Cool Whip is in there’s no getting it back.
Fold the Cool Whip in, don’t beat it. Running a mixer through it knocks the air out of the whipped topping and breaks up the pudding you just waited on. After that the filling stays thin no matter how long it sits in the refrigerator.

If the filling still looks thin when you go to assemble, put the bowl in the refrigerator for 20 minutes first. It’ll firm up, and it’s a lot easier to fix in a bowl than in the pan after you have started assembling.

Glass baking dish with a layer of graham crackers on the bottom, topped with a mound of creamy white filling, on a marble countertop—an irresistible start to this classic Eclair Cake Recipe.

Ingredient Notes

Five grocery items on a marble counter—Cool Whip tub, Honey Maid graham crackers, two Jell-O French vanilla pudding boxes, Betty Crocker chocolate frosting, and a Sealtest milk carton—are neatly arranged in front of a white tile wall, ready to be combined into a delicious Eclair Cake Recipe.

Graham crackers: This recipe used to call for cinnamon graham crackers. But when my independent recipe tester, Teresia, tested this recipe, she said “the sweetness from the cinnamon does not match the flavor of any eclair I have had, donuts included. Most of the sweetness typically comes from the chocolate frosting.”

I switched the recipe to plain graham crackers to refine the flavors. If you’d rather have the cinnamon version, put those in the bottom two layers and keep plain ones for the top, since the top is where you really notice the cinnamon. Swapping in chocolate graham crackers works too!

Vanilla wafers – If graham crackers aren’t your thing, many readers have told me they use vanilla wafers instead. The wafers don’t soften into layers the same way as graham crackers, so you get a softer, more scoopable cake rather than clean squares.

If it’s the wafer and pudding combination you’re after, my eclair cookies are built around it on purpose. Same vanilla wafers, same pudding, same chocolate, except each one stays crisp instead of going soft in a pan.

Chocolate frosting: I’d recommend using dark chocolate fudge frosting rather than milk chocolate. The frosting is the only strong flavor in this cake. Dark chocolate has more cocoa in it and less sugar, so it gives you something bitter to push back against all that sweetness. Milk chocolate just adds more sweetness.

If you want to take it further than that, skip the tub of frosting and pour a ganache over the top instead.

Additional eclair cake flavors:

Why I Pour The Chocolate Frosting
…Instead Of Spreading It

Melting the tub of frosting rather than spreading it straight from the refrigerator is the difference between a smooth chocolate top and a torn one. Cold canned frosting drags the graham crackers around underneath as soon as you push a spatula through it.

Chocolate sauce is being poured from a measuring cup over a layer of graham crackers in a glass baking dish, likely as part of preparing an Eclair Cake recipe.

Making Ahead And Storage

Day two is better than day one. The graham crackers keep softening the longer the cake sits, so there’s no downside to making it well ahead.

In the refrigerator: four or five days, covered. Tent the plastic wrap rather than laying it flat on the chocolate frosting, or it’ll lift the surface when you peel it back.

In the freezer: up to two months, wrapped in plastic and then in foil. Thaw it overnight in the refrigerator, not on the counter.

For cleaner squares: 30 minutes in the freezer before you cut firms the filling just enough to give every square a straight edge. It’s back to serving temperature about 15 minutes later.

A slice of decadent Eclair Cake sits on a white plate, showcasing its layers of graham crackers, creamy filling, and rich chocolate topping—an irresistible treat from any classic Eclair Cake Recipe.

This post was originally published in July 2021. It was updated in July 2026 with new photos as well as revisions to the recipe to make it easier to follow.

Food Round Ups

100+ Easy Summer Desserts – Ice Cream, No-Bake Treats, and Fruity Favorites

Food Round Ups

50+ No Bake Desserts the Whole Family Will Love

Eclair Cake

5 from 79 votes

Graham crackers, vanilla pudding, and dark chocolate frosting layered in a pan. This no bake eclair cake chills overnight and slices into clean squares.

Prep Time 20

Total Time 10 20

Servings

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Ingredients

14.4 ounce box graham crackers, plain or honey (27 full sheets, 9 per layer)
6.8 ounces instant French Vanilla pudding (two 3.4-ounce boxes)
16 ounces Cool Whip, thawed overnight in the refrigerator (two 8-ounce tubs)
3 ½ cups cold whole milk
16 ounces dark chocolate fudge frosting

Instructions

Spray a 9x13x3-inch pan with non-stick cooking spray on the bottom and lightly on the sides. It’s very important to use a dish that is 3 inches deep because it creates space for the graham crackers to be snug up against all of the edges.
Whisk the pudding and cold milk together in a large bowl until smooth, then let the bowl sit for 5 minutes. The pudding is ready when a spoon dragged through it leaves a track that holds its shape for a second before closing over. If the track fills in right away, wait 2 more minutes and check again. Do not add the Cool Whip until the pudding has thickened.
Fold in the Cool Whip by hand with a spatula, cutting down through the middle of the bowl and turning the mixture up over itself. Do not use a mixer at this stage. Stop when there are no more white and yellow swirls and the mix is fully yellow and uniform.
Layer 9 full graham cracker sheets along the bottom of the pan, covering the entire bottom to the edges. Five sheets stand tall across the pan, two lie sideways along the top edge, and a broken piece fills the last gap.
Divide the pudding mixture in half.
Spoon the first half of the pudding mixture onto the graham cracker layer in dabs across the whole surface, then spread from dab to dab with an offset spatula until fully covered. Adding it all in one spot pushes the crackers underneath out of line. Do your best to get each layer as level as possible, so your end product is evenly distributed.
Lay a second layer of 9 graham cracker sheets on top of the pudding layer to the edges.
Fully spread the remaining pudding mixture over the second layer of graham crackers.
Lay the third and final layer of 9 graham cracker sheets to the edges.
Transfer your tub of dark chocolate fudge frosting to a microwave-safe bowl (do not microwave it in the tub) and microwave for 30 seconds, remove, and stir fully.
Microwave for another 30 seconds, stir and remove any lumps. Immediately pour the frosting onto the final layer of graham crackers and spread gently to the edges. With two hands, give your whole dish a gentle shake back and forth for a few seconds to level out your layers!
Cover in saran wrap and chill in the refrigerator for 10 hours or overnight.
When you’re ready to serve your cake, remove it from the fridge and let the cake sit uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes for it to get that beautiful shine restored to the frosting topping.

Notes

The pudding will not set with dairy-free or lactose-free milk. Make sure you are using regular milk in this recipe.
A box of graham crackers usually comes with a broken piece or two. These pieces work great to fill in the gaps along edges or along the uneven edge of a cracker that’s slightly broken.
This recipe uses 27 full graham cracker sheets, 9 per layer. A 14.4 ounce box of Honey Maid or Keebler holds three sleeves of 9 sheets, so one box covers all three layers with a broken piece or two left over. Store brand and gluten free graham crackers often have smaller sheets or fewer per sleeve, so buy a second box if you are using one of those.
If you want to weigh your pudding mixture after it’s been mixed to get a more precise measurement of it divided in half, you can! Humidity can affect the weight and swell of Cool Whip, so that could slightly impact your weight. The full batch weighs about 1468 grams or 3.2 pounds, so each half should be about 734 grams or 1.6 pounds. Weigh the whole bowl first, then move half of it into a second bowl.
Chilling your dessert is not optional. It is very important that this step happens because the pudding and frosting need to set, and the graham crackers need to soften up.