No Bake, Refrigerate, Birthday Cake!

Fun Fact: August and September typically clock in the most births per month per calendar year in the U.S.A. What this means of course is that right about now and in the immediate days and weeks to come….somebody you know is celebrating a birthday!

WHOOOO-HOO!  Happy birthday to them! 

Not so fun fact: August is typically the hottest month in the northern hemisphere, and where I live (Florida) September….well…..it ain’t much better, what can I tell ya?

whoo-hoo      🙁     ?     (what just happened here?)

Okay then, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. Lots of birthdays require lots of cakes, and nobody has a lot of time. And as far as heating up the kitchen?  Not so much into THAT right now either, are you? Now you can always go BUY a cake….oh sure, you can always do that old mundane thing. And it would be delicious, of course. And beautiful, I’m sure. No problem. What’s there to judge……right?   😜Not that you really even need an impending birthday to whip together this adorable and super easy refrigerator cake….but seriously, what birthday babe wouldn’t be thrilled to find themselves on the receiving end of a fluffy slice of this?

“You made this for meeeeeeeee?????”

Just five ingredients. Piece it together in less than 15 minutes (truth!).* Totally yummy, smooshie cookie cakey goodness. Slap on some sprinkles and a couple of candles and call it a party!

*A’hem – before we begin I have a bit of a disclaimer here in the truth department. This little beauty requires an overnight stay in the refrigerator to be at its festive best. So yes, although it truly takes a few minutes to assemble, it does require one actual sleepover in the chiller.    So….PLAN ACCORDINGLY!

I say we call your refrigerator the new oven and make this cake!

Start with a pint of heavy whipping cream in a medium-sized metal or glass bowl. You want to avoid using a plastic bowl simply because it won’t hold or conduct cold like the metal (best choice) or glass can, and the colder things are the better. In fact, if you think of it, stash your bowl and beaters in the freezer for a few minutes before you begin (although I seriously did NOT do that and things turned out just peachy for me). Add two teaspoons of vanilla extract and get to whippin’.

Electric beaters are great for this, a stand mixer is awesome as well. Believe me when I tell you that you DO NOT want to be beating this by hand. You really don’t. It can be done…but what a buzz kill, arg, no fun at all.

Anyhoo once you get this nice and fluffy, about a minute or two later,add 1/4 cup of powdered sugar, and beat this in for another 20 seconds. Get out a rubber scraper and take a second to run it around and up and under everything so it’s all nice and incorporated. Add 1 cup of ricotta cheese to this, and zip the beaters through for another 10 seconds or so. Now it’s time to go manual, and fold everybody together thoroughly. You don’t want to over-beat the cream!    😬   (really, it just gets weird). Now sock this away in the fridge for a minute, you’ll be seeing it again soon enough.

You’ll need a box of plain old, garden variety graham crackers.  Don’t purchase the ones with the cinnamon sugar or any of that other fancy shiz-nit. Just keep it classic here. I used the Nabisco brand original variety. Get out a 9×9 inch square baking pan (glass looks prettier here, metal is totally fine if that’s what you got), and place down a layer of the crackers.

You want to keep your layers even. Obviously the crackers won’t be a perfect fit, so just take a knife and trim down the bits as you need to. Yes, there will be some breakage (and therefore a certain amount of snackage…haha) but you have a whole box of grahams to play with, so keep it neat!

Get out your whipped cream and plop a couple of big spoonfuls down onto your layer of grahams. Using the back of the spoon, spread the cream evenly over every smidgen surface of those crackers! You don’t want any brown showing. You’ll want about a 3/4 inch layer of cream. Got it? Now repeat!

Place another layer of graham crackers over the cream. You want everything and everybody to be as even as you can, thus creating a “layer ” cake effect. You’ll probably find that you have to switch up your graham crackers every which way to make them fit……no problem.

Unless you hate puzzles.

Keep alternating crackers and cream until you run out of room, or cream…….in my case I ended up with four layers of each, plus about a cup of cream left over…….so rather than just plop it all on top, which would of been FINE………..

I opted to get a little fancy and used a plain old baggie to make a make-shift pastry bag, and with a star tip, I piped a border of poufs all over the top of my cake. I think it was a tiny bit overkill. 😖 lol!

Now cover your masterpiece with some saran wrap (stab the corners of your cake with toothpicks first to hold the wrap up off the surface) and stash it in the fridge for an over-nighter……..(or if you do this first thing in the a.m. you’ll be good by party time). Keep this in the chiller until you are ready to serve……

and then doll her up with some sprinkles, candles, or none of the above! Slice this easily into nine squares and you will be amazed at the tenderness of the softened graham crackers with the silky smooth sweetness of the ricotta-cream. So yummy and decadent, with very little effort. 

But big, beautiful pay out.

RECIPE BELOW: For real, this takes just minutes to whack together, it does not get any easier. I highly recommend (ya think?) an overnight chill down…..but for the sake of time you can squeak by with at least six hours in the Frigidaire, at the VERY least….if you must. ONLY IF!!!!! (killin’ me, Smalls)  Add the sprinkles at the last minute, because sometimes the dyes bleed and there’s nothing happy about a bleeding jimmy (yikes). Makes 9 perfect servings, which is just another reason to celebrate.