Jamie Oliver's Chocolate Fridge Cake with Pecan and Meringues

While having a look at Jamie's website today, I came across this recipe for a Chocolate Fridge Cake. The colours of the cake in the photo looked simply fantastic, so I thought I would make the cake to share with my mates at work tomorrow. Considering how hit and miss I am when making cakes in the oven, I thought maybe I'd be better at making a cake in the fridge - the complete opposite of baking!

So I headed to Safeway on my way home tonight and picked up the ingredients. By the time I had everything in my basket, it came to a total of $23! This was one expensive cake!

Here is the ingredients and method from Jamie's website:

• 200g digestive biscuits
• 110g whole pecans, roughly chopped
• 110g pistachio nuts, peeled
• 10 glace cherries
• 2 ready-made meringue nests
• 150g unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon golden syrup
• 200g dark chocolate

Break the biscuits into small pieces directly into a large bowl.

Add the pecans, pistachio nuts and cherries and mix together.


Put the rest of the ingredients into a separate, heatproof bowl and put on a low heat over a pan of simmering water until the butter and chocolate have melted.


Combine the biscuit mix with the chocolate mixture. Line a plastic container with clingfilm, leaving plenty of extra film at the edges to help turn the cake out later.


Tip the everything into the container, place in the fridge to firm up then turn out, dust with icing sugar and cut into chunky slices.

When turned out and sliced, this cake looks awesome. With the green of the pistachios, the red of the cherries, the white of the meringues make this cake a great christmas treat. My cake though, seems very crumbly, maybe I used too many dry biscuits or not enough chocolate. When I slice it, it literally falls apart. As far as taste though, it tastes like a very expensive chocolate crackle! It's very, very rich and just tastes like nuts and biscuits that have been coated in chocolate. If I was going to make it again, I would use more chocolate or less dry biscuits, but I'm not sure if I would make it again- for the cost of it, I wouldn't say it's worth it. Oh well, if the worst comes to worst, I can do what one should do with all desserts that go wrong; crumble it up and have it with ice cream!