Choc Ripple Cake

The Choc Ripple Cake is perfect for those who want to impress with minimum effort and maximum impact. 

You will, however, need to plan ahead a little.

This dessert needs at least 6 hours standing time in the fridge, preferably 12 hours. 

Provided you’re organised, though, this is a simple, versatile and decadent dessert. And the best thing? There’s absolutely no baking involved!

What’s so magic about Choc Ripple Cake?

So, you may be wondering how on earth you get those lovely strips of chocolate cake without baking.

Well, this “cake” involves a little trickery.

As the name suggests, the cake is really softened chocolate ripple biscuits. If I hadn’t made it myself, though, I’m not sure I’d suspect that the “cake” is really just biscuits softened by the cream filling. It really is very cake-y.

An Aussie tradition

Choc Ripple cake recipes started appearing in Australian newspapers in the 1930’s.

The biscuits, which are now made by Arnott’s, were originally made by Brockhoff.

After acquiring Brockhoff in the 1960’s, Arnott’s has continued to manufacture this popular chocolate-y biscuit. Which is good news, since it’s the star ingredient in this recipe.

And as you can read in the ad, if you like Chocolate Ripple biscuits, then “you’ll go crazy” over the cake.

The ad also suggests you sprinkle your cake with chopped walnuts, just as Nana Ling suggests in her recipe.

The great thing about this cake is that there are plenty of variations you can try, both in the flavouring you add to the cream and the added flavour sprinkled over the top of the cake.

And if Chocolate Ripple biscuits aren’t available in your country, just use any sweet chocolate cookies that come in a packet. 

Variation ideas for ripple cake

Nana Ling suggests wine or passionfruit juice to flavour the cream.

I’ve opted for Baileys Irish Cream here but you could add a number of other things, including vanilla essence or freshly brewed coffee.

Cream flavouring ideas

• Bailey’s Irish Cream
• Kahlua
• other wines or liquers
• vanilla essence
• passionfruit juice
• cinnamon
• cocoa
• rose water
• coffee
• chai
• maple syrup
• lavendar
• mint.

Topping ideas

• chopped walnuts
• chopped almonds
• chopped candied fruit
• passionfruit pulp
• shaved chocolate
• rose petals
• hundreds and thousands
• lavendar
• mint leaves
• chopped strawberries
• toasted coconut
• sugar flowers (from cake decorating aisle at supermarket).

A great cake to make with kids

Miss Z made her own kids version of the Chocolate Ripple Cake, using vanilla essence to flavour the cream and grated chocolate to decorate.

Assembling your Chocolate Ripple Cake

The hardest part of this recipe – and it’s really not that hard once you see it done – is putting the cookies together with the cream. You also need to slice the cake diagonally to reveal the striped pattern.

Check out the short video in this post to see the easiest way to assemble and slice the cake. 

Nana Ling’s Chocolate Ripple Cake recipe

Keep scrolling for the tested and tweaked version.