Raspberry vanilla fridge cake — a Honey & Co Recipe

Receive free Food & Drink updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Food & Drink news every morning.

Baking in the summer? Don’t do it unless you have to. Lollies on sticks in lurid colours, ice creams in cones dripping down on to sand-covered hands, peaches, on their own or dunked in sweet wine, berries picked fresh from the hedge, a big juicy wedge of melon, with or without a drape of ham; these should pretty much have you covered on the sweet front from now until September. Leave baking for the colder months. 

But there are occasions, such as a friendly celebration or a child’s birthday, when only a cake will do. You can’t really put candles on a watermelon. Still, there’s no need to pull out the mixer and start separating eggs. Enter the fridge cake. This is an ideal summer baking project in that there is very little, and only very basic baking involved: no heavy machinery, finicky ingredients or complex instructions. Its flavours are bold and harmonious, simple and joyous, like childhood itself. Just raspberry, vanilla, almonds and cream. It is perfectly suited to a novice or a non-baker, and a great one to do with kids on the long days of the school holidays.

Raspberry vanilla fridge cake

To make an 8-inch cake to serve 8-10

To make the base and topping

For the filling

1. Pre-heat your oven to 170C (fan assist).

2. Mix all the base/topping ingredients together until smooth, then place 300g of the mix in the bottom of a lightly greased eight-inch springform cake tin. Flatten the mix so it reaches the sides of the tin.

3. Place the rest of the mix (just over 100g) on a baking tray and flatten to make a large cookie of about the same thickness. Put both in the oven for 20 minutes until they’re golden all over. Remove and cool.

4. Place the cream cheese, icing sugar, double cream and vanilla in a large bowl and mix using a spatula until blended and thick (don’t use a whisk as you’re more likely to break the texture).

5. Place half the cream cheese mixture on the baked flat base in the tin and smooth to the edges. Top with 200g of raspberries in one flat layer, then add the remaining cheese filling and smooth to cover the raspberries.

6. Crumble the pastry cookie over the top to cover it with delicious crumbs and arrange the rest of the raspberries on top of the cake. Pop in the fridge, ideally overnight. When ready to serve, wipe the sides of the tin with a warm cloth to loosen the cake, remove from the mould and serve cold.

Follow Sarit and Itamar on Instagram @honeyandco

Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first