Kate's Kitchen Voodoo Kake

photo by Chris Couper

I have a dear friend named Kate. One of my first blog posts was about me making cookies for Kate's mom to take to a cookie exchange party at Christmas because Kate's mom, like Kate herself, doesn't cook.

Imagine my shock the year that Kate brought this chocolate cake, covered in whipped cream to our annual Christmas Eve party? My son ate half of it and proclaimed it to be THE best cake he had ever eaten. He even asked if Kate could make it for him as his birthday cake. That would be like Kate's daughter asking me to organize her room.




I decided that I wanted to make this magical chocolate cake myself and asked Kate for the recipe. She looked at me like I had three heads and said "there isn't a recipe. Are you making fun of me?"
It seems like I am the only person of our generation who did not grow up eating this Nabisco chocolate wafer refrigerator cake. My mom was the queen of easy desserts and I certainly ate my share of Jello 1-2-3,  sherrif lemon meringue pie and frozen McCain's banana cream pies but this was something I had never heard of.
Little Shack had requested creme brulee for his birthday but we were also going to spend Easter at my sister's house and it would be a bit of a birthday celebration as well so how could I make anything but Kate's cake?

The hardest part was finding the Nabisco chocolate wafers at the grocery store. It's just cookies, 3 cups of whipped cream and I added fresh strawberries and shaved dark chocolate because I can't leave anything well enough alone.

I swear to god, this is one of most delicious things I have ever eaten and I can't wait to try the 300 variations that I have running through my head right now. I also feel a bit vindicated by the simplicity because even Prince William had a no cook bisquit cake as his groom's cake at his wedding. I sense a trend.
I hereby declare that the cake pop and the cupcake are dead! We are entering the year of the refrigerator cake! Long live the refrigerator cake!

Kate's Kitchen Voodoo Kake
adapted from the Nabisco Refrigerator Cake

1 pkg Nabisco chocolate wafers
2 to 3 cups of whipping cream, whipped of course (you can get away with just two cups but why would you want to do that?)
2 pints of strawberries, washed and sliced and about 1/2 cup or so of those chopped very fine
chunk of dark chocolate
1 blood orange
1/4 cup sugar

I sprinkled the sugar and the juice of the blood orange over all the strawberries that were left after making the cake and let them sit all day and get nice and juicy and served those along side the cake.

make stacks of six cookies

spread a bit of whipped cream on the cookie

add a few pieces of finely chopped berry

top with another cookie

strawberries that you will maserate with sugar and blood orange juice all day

repeat until you have a stack of six cookies with whipped cream

move on to the next stack of six

lay them on their sides and make them into a long log or a two side by side

cover is plastic wrap and leave in fridge at least four hours or even overnight

just before serving, cover the whole thing with whipped cream

now it will look pretty enough to eat so you can stop here if you wish

or you can shave some dark chocolate all over the cake

how pretty is that?

thanks to Shack for taking pictures of the construction and to my talented nephew, Chris for taking the afters. Check out Chris's photography site.