Fridge cakes

"a delicious mix of melted chocolate, crushed biscuits and pretty much whatever sweet additions your heart desires." BBC Food

When you host a book group you have to supply some sort of cake to eat at the end of the discussion. And last week I decided to make this rather delectable looking fridge cake from Yotam Ottolenghi. And I have to say it was easy, and very delicious but very, very rich. You only need a tiny bit. I vaguely remember seeing the term fridge cake here and there so thought to look into it. And I have, and frankly there is not a lot to say.

Wikipedia seems to think it originated in the town of Troon in Scotland, but I have found no further reference to this so have no idea whether it is correct or not. Obviously invented after the invention of refrigerators, but nobody seems to want to put up their hand and claim to be the inventor.

Basically you melt some chocolate with some butter and then pour it over your chosen mix of ingredients in a baking paper lined tray - pretty much anything goes here, though biscuits seem to be essential. Smooth it out, put it in the fridge to set and hey presto. We are still eating it a week later. It was so rich. I did cut slices about the size shown above, but really you only need half of that.

Felicity Cloake gives a more or less complete rundown of the options, but there are heaps of recipes out there.

Other names for fridge cakes include tiffin (I thought this was Indian food brought to you for lunch), rocky road, hedgehog and fifteens. Well actually I think the fifteens are not quite the same as the genuine article seems to be a baked thing. But the BBC does have a recipe for a fridge version - one of the few fridge cakes that does not include chocolate. Well you've got to have something that will set and hold everything together I guess.

It's also really good to make with the kids because it's easy, sweet and delicious and gets them thinking about what will go with what.

It would make a good Easter dessert - you could decorate it with chocolate eggs.