Royal Wedding’s Groom’s Cake: Chocolate Biscuit Cake

Last weekend there were three special events: two birthdays and Easter. I decided to make the groom’s chocolate biscuit cake that will be served at the royal wedding. If it is good enough for royalty, I was hopeful it would be good enough for my friends and family. Let’s be honest. The formal cake is beautiful and may get all the attention but it is the groom’s cake people will actually want to eat!

Thanks goes out to Debra for inspiring me to make this cake and for sharing her story about refrigerator cake: “When I was a kid, my Grandma from oh-so-British Ontario used to make a no-bake treat that she simply called ‘refrigerator cake.’ It was sort of like a Nanaimo bar and involved chocolate, some kind of crushed cookies and, I’m pretty sure, evaporated milk. No one knew how to make refrigerator cake but her — it was her ‘secret recipe.’ I absolutely adored refrigerator cake and have never had anything in the 45 years since then that even comes close to its delicious taste. I’m wondering if Prince William’s cake isn’t some kind of variant on it?”

I think it might be Debra and I hope you get a chance to try it and let us know! If you want to make this cake to celebrate the wedding tomorrow, I suggest you start working on it today. You can find the recipe here. It is a no-bake cake but as with all cakes, it takes a little time. This one is surprisingly easy to put together.

You need to get 7 ounces of rich tea biscuits (cookies) and break them into pieces. Digestive cookies would work great.

This was the tough part, cutting up all the chocolate. This recipe took every piece of chocolate I had stashed around my kitchen. The cake requires 16 oz or 2 1/2 cups of bittersweet chocolate. Mine was a mixed bag of what I had on hand.

You can heat up the 1 cup of heavy cream, 4 tbsp (1/2 a stick) of butter and 2 tbsp of honey in the microwave but I went old school and used a double boiler.

Once everything is very melted and hot, add the chocolate.

I like to wait a second to let the chocolate come up to temperature. Then stir everything until you have a giant bowl of melted chocolate.

Stir in 1 tsp of vanilla.

Add the cookies, stir to combine and put in a greased 7″ or 8″ springform pan. Chill in the fridge for at least three hours.

Get out some parchment, top it with a cooling rack and flip the cake upside down. This way you have a perfectly even top.

To make the glaze, heat up 2 tbsp of butter and 1/4 cup of heavy cream in a small sauce pan. Pour on top of 6 oz or 1 cup of chopped up bittersweet chocolate. Give it a second to heat the chocolate and then begin to stir in the middle little circles. As the chocolate melts, keep stirring until everything is incorporated.

Pour out all the glaze onto the top of the cake. Cover the top with the glaze using a spatula. Then ease the glaze over the top and along the sides.

It does not have to be perfectly flat on top. In fact, leaving some swooshes gives a very pretty effect.

What a stunning cake! Not difficult, surprisingly low in sugar and tastes like a super chocolatey-Twix chocolate bar. I can see why it is a favourite with the royal family, it is so decadent it is ridiculous! Chocolate, cream and cookies. More like a cookie truffle than a cake!

Our friends LOVED the chocolate cake which made me very happy. I also had to get the biggest royal fan I know to try it out. For Easter I brought over some of the cake to let my mother-in-law Lorraine try it. When she found out it was the groom’s cake I got a big hug and a kiss on the cheek for it! She loved this cake and enjoyed it so much, was so excited, she put the rest in the freezer so she could enjoy it on the day of the royal wedding.

Well that made me feel good! I am not a huge royalist myself but it is nice to see good news for once and celebrate a wedding that is based on love and happiness. Cheers to the happy couple!