Polish fridge cake recipe

Source

I'm reposting this with better instructions and more specific ingredients. This dessert was made in Poland during the communist era as a chocolate substitute, and will probably be familiar to a lot of Poles. The recipe is idiot-proof (or at least idiot-resistant up to 200m). If you have burned fudge (*cough* like me), don't worry -- this is a lot easier.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup water
  • 250g unsalted butter
  • 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
  • 500g full cream milk powder
  • Vanilla and/or almond essence
  • 200g plain biscuits (e.g. Marie biscuits; one packet)
  • 300g of your favourite nuts (3 packets)

Equipment:

  • Large pot
  • Spoon
  • 2l tupperware container with lid (e.g. 2l ice-cream tub)
  • Aluminium foil for lining
  • Cutting board
  • Large knife

If you have no foil you can take your chances with a bare plastic container, but it will be harder to unmould the cake later. If you're going to do that, at least make sure it's flexible. You can probably use one of those springform cake tins as well.

Instructions:

Put the sugar, water, butter and cocoa powder in the pot, making sure that there are no lumps in the cocoa powder (you can sift it through a sieve, or just pre-mix it into the sugar). Heat the mixture until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved, stirring until you have a uniform brown goo. Don't overheat it; when it starts boiling you should be done.

Remove the mixture from the heat and leave it to cool down slightly. While it is cooling, break up the biscuits into quarters, and if you're using walnuts or pecans pick through them to make sure there are no bits of shell. Line the container with foil -- you can mould a foil lining over the outside and then transfer it to the inside.

Once the mixture is no longer boiling hot, add a few drops of vanilla/almond essence and the milk powder and mix thoroughly until you have a uniform mass. Add the nuts and stir them in. Then add the biscuits and stir them in. The mixture should now be pretty solid. Spoon it into the lined container, smooth the top with a spoon, put the lid on and put it in the fridge overnight. Pat yourself on the back, and eat all the chocolate left over in the pot.

The next day, unmould the cake from the container, peel off the foil, flip it over on the cutting board, cut it into slices about half a centimetre thick and cut the slices into halves or thirds. Stack up the pieces back in the container, and eat any that don't fit.

Variations:

If you're one of those unfortunates allergic to nuts, you can use more biscuits instead. Some people put in raisins and other dried fruit -- there's no accounting for taste. If you don't eat gluten, leave out the biscuits. If you leave out the biscuits try to put in a bit less water.

It should be possible to make this with margarine and some kind of vegan milk powder substitute -- if you try it and it works, let me know what you used in the comments.