Easy No-Bake Chocolate Fridge Cake

What do you bake when your oven isn’t holding a consistent temperature? Or when it’s too hot to even think about turning the oven on? A fridge cake!

When the Oven Gives Up

As with most things in our house, what looked brand new when we moved in was just well cleaned. The oven was the epitome of this. It looked immaculate and we thought it was new, but it had obviously just had a professional clean.

Slowly the temperature became inconsistent and one dial fell off. Just buy another one is what you might be thinking, but it’s a floor-mounted oven that means the bottom oven door opens onto the floor. This is just the right height for a Labrador, so you get help when putting things in and out of the oven, which is not ideal. So, replacing the oven had become just another thing with too many steps to be a quick fix.

Which meant cake had been missing from the household for a while. Not a good situation, especially given my trading name.

A Childhood Recipe Rediscovered

I purchased a maple and pecan tray bake the other week at Nirvana Spa, a local spa with a sea salt pool which is one of my wellbeing treats to myself (more about that in another blog post), which triggered a childhood memory of eating and helping to make this easy fridge cake with my aunt when I was a child.

We’d gone to stay with my aunt and uncle, and they had a new kitchen gadget. A microwave. Yep, that’s how old I am. My aunt was trying it out and had worked out that it was a fab way to melt stuff if you did it gently.

The original recipe is in imperial measurements and is based on a pound cake I think. They are called pound cakes because you use a pound of this and a pound of that, and all the ingredients are either whole pounds or parts of pounds.

Below I’ve included the original recipe, along with the version we used this time in metric. I didn’t buy enough chocolate, so we adjusted it slightly, and hubby made the cake whilst I was attending a course on Pilates and Neurodiversity with Body Control Pilates.

If you wanted a richer version, Green & Blacks published a recipe in their Green & Blacks Chocolate Recipes book (2003). Apparently it was included because the staff writing the book used to pop over to Konditor & Cook, where they enjoyed this cake. Sainsbury’s Magazine has also published the recipe on its website.

Easy No-Bake Chocolate Fridge Cake Recipe

The original recipe is in imperial measurements and is based on a pound cake. Below I’ve included both the original recipe and the metric version we used this time.

Equipment & Timings

• Cake tin: 8″ loaf tin
• Prep time: 30 minutes
• Chill time: 3 hours
• Total time: 3 hours 30 mins
• Serves: 12-16 slices

How to make the cake

1. Break the chocolate into small chunks.
2. Cut the butter into small cubes.
3. Put the biscuits into a plastic bag (or maybe wrap them in a tea towel, an idea to try?) and bash them with a rolling pin to break them into little bits. Don’t make them into crumbs, leave some bits bigger than the others, about the size of a quarter of a walnut.
4. Wash the cherries in hot water to remove the outside syrup, then sieve and cut into quarters.
5. Line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper. I use pre-formed liners from Lakeland, so much easier than fiddling with the corners of the tin.
6. Beat the eggs into a mug or glass.
7. Melt the chocolate in a big glass bowl. I do this in the microwave on the defrost setting for a couple of minutes at a time, but you could also use a bain-marie (put the glass bowl over a pan of water whilst it boils on the hob. The bottom of the bowl must not touch the water).
8. Melt the butter. Again, I do this in the microwave, being very careful to do it in chunks of 10 or 20 seconds. If you’re using the bain-marie, then you can just stir the butter into the melted chocolate with the bowl still on the hob.
9. Mix the eggs into the liquid mixture. As you mix, the mixture will go a bit grainy, but keep stirring as this “cooks” the eggs.
10. Mix the biscuits, sugar and walnuts into the chocolate mixture.
11. Add the cherries to the chocolate mixture.

12. Pour or scoop the mixture into the lined loaf tin, then put it into the fridge to set.

13. Three hours later, take it out and have a slice.

Storage Tips

Keep in the fridge in an airtight container and slice as needed.

More Cake Recipes to Try

This fridge cake brought back plenty of childhood memories, and there are a few other favourites on the blog too. If you’re looking for another bake to try, take a look at my Coffee and Walnut Cake, Lemon Drizzle Cake (Gluten-Free) and Coconut Loaf.