‘Chockie Night’ and Cherry Ripe Chocolate Slice

When I was in high school I had a friend who lived across the back fence and at their house, every Thursday night was ‘Chockie Night’.  Chockie Night was where my friend’s father would buy chocolates on his way home from work in the city, then catch the train, walk home from the station then march in through the front door carrying brown paper bags filled with chocolates.

After dinner the brown paper bags would be opened and out will spill all different types of chocolate treats – boxes of chocolates, chocolate bars and blocks of chocolate in many different flavours and varieties but most of it either Cadbury or Red Tulip.  And it was all laid out on the dining room table and my friend’s father would say, ‘Help yourself’.

Cherry Ripe Slice

Cherry Ripe Slice


Now, across the back fence and over at my house, we weren’t allowed chocolate and we only had chocolate in the house at Easter when a very reluctant Easter Bunny would leave one or two small eggs for us.  So, you can imagine, that with the goings-on across the back fence I was very keen on a Thursday night invitation for dinner.  And my friend’s parents were very generous souls and for some reason were quite happy to set an extra place setting for me most Thursdays.

So after dinner my friend and I would reach out both hands towards the centre of the table and choose from a wonderful and colourful selection of chocolates all wrapped up in sparkling foil.  I had a few favourites like the blocks of Cadbury Snack chocolate, Violet Crumble bars, Crunchie bars, Whittakers Peanut Slabs, Fry’s Turkish Delight and the Cherry Ripe Bar.

The Cherry Ripe bar became my favourite and ever since those Thursday nights I’m always able to reach my hand into my pantry and find a Cherry Ripe or two.

Having a few spare in my pantry, I wondered what more I could do with a Cherry Ripe bar and of course that just meant chopping them down then adding more chocolate and more sugar to something that is already full of chocolate and sugar – quite perfect, really.

Chocolate, Cherries and Coconut

Chocolate, Cherries and Coconut

Cherry Ripe Chocolate Slice

Makes:  24

Degree of Difficulty:  2/5

Cost:  These are all main-stream ingredients so easy to source and readily available from supermarkets.    Minimal charge, really.

  • 1 1/2 packets of Marie biscuits (or similar plain biscuits), crushed
  • 200g butter, melted
  • 3/4 of a 390g can sweetened condensed milk
  • 300g of Cherry Ripe Bars, chopped

Icing:

  • 250g dark chocolate
  • 1/3 cup cream

Grease and line a 31cm x 21cm slice tin.

Combine crushed Marie biscuits, melted butter, condensed milk and Cherry Ripe pieces.

Pour into slice tin and press down until firm.

Over a double boiler, melt chocolate and cream.  Mix until well combined.  Remove from heat.  Pour over slice.

Refrigerate for half an hour before cutting into squares.

 

Quite addictive

Quite addictive, really

This recipe has been adapted form a recipe found on Best Recipes.

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Comments

  1. Hi,
    Wow, now that would be very dangerous to have in my fridge, I’m a chocoholic from way back. 🙂
    The chocolate slices look fantastic and seems very easy to do as well.

  2. My parents wouldn’t buy candy for us but my best friend’s family often bought candy bars to give to the kids when they did well at school. They had 10 kids and I was honorary #11 so I got mine too. Great memories. How easy is your treat!

  3. I’ve never heard of Cherry Ripe bars, but they sound delicious! And with even more chocolate…why not?

    Only chocolate on Easter?!! Oh my goodness, what a deprived childhood you had. Ha! I bet Thursdays became your favorite day of the week! 🙂

  4. Cherries and chocolate sounds like a wonderful combination. Being from Canada, I’ve never heard of Marie biscuits so I wonder whether, in case someone were interested in reproducing your recipe for these bars, you could include some sort of weight measure for the packets of biscuits you used … just to make things easier to replace the product with digestive biscuits or something similar. 🙂

    As to the Cherry Ripe bars. I have NO idea what could be used to replace these. 🙁

  5. This sounds sinfully good. I think I should refrain from making as I most like will polish off the whole thing by myself.

  6. Oh, how sweet, a chocolate night. I would have finagled an invitation to the friend’s house for that Thursday evening meal also. If we have Cherry Ripe candy in the U.S., I do not know of it. Those bars (that’s what we call this type of treat in Minnesota) look decadent.

  7. Don’t ever remember trying Cherry Ripe but Crunchies, Turkish Delights, yes. Along with Galaxy bars, Mars, Penguins, Breakaways…and so on. My dad was very generous with chocolate when we were young.
    Cherries and chocolate; a perfect combo and those bars look amazing. Nothing better than adding more chocolate and sugar.

    Nazneen xx

  8. We didn’t keep candy at our house growing up, but my mother was a baker, so there was usually cake or brownies or something else good. I have always kept a small candy jar filled with chocolates at our house. It’s good to have a little treat always at hand, I say! These little bars look so pretty with the cherry bits.

  9. Cherries and chocolate go so well together. It is a good thing we don’t have those products here as the recipe is very tempting.

  10. I love the idea of Chockie NIght–clever father, that one. And this slice looks particularly tempting with that unbeatable combo of chocolate and cherries. Thanks, Charlie.

  11. Gosh, I don’t think we have Cherry Ripe bars but those look amazing. I have always been a sucker for chocolate and cherry.

  12. Yum yum yum. I have a cherry ripe slice made from scratch on my baking page and it is to die for. I actually was never keen on commercially produced cherry ripe but the way you have used it looks fabulous.
    Carolyn
    Ps love this commenting system my details are permenantly here now I have commented. Sooooo much better than discus or however you spell it.

  13. I love the cherry, coconut and chocolate combination, these look great! I got Carob as treats when I was little as an alternative to chocolate and I still love it today 🙂

  14. Haha, sure beats my tradition of Thurday night, soup and sandwich night! My kids would definitely go for Chockie Thursdays! These bars look amazing! Good recipe to use up the leftovers from Halloween and Easter!!

  15. I am quite jealous. We have no Cherry Rip bars in the US. I will have to do some research. I wonder how your sisters never caught on to tag along. Thanks for a recipe simple enough for a non-chef like me. I will find a way to use this:)

  16. These are not being made in my house – I wouldn’t be able to resist them! We used to have chockie night in my house too – not sure if was Thursday or Friday, it was obviously when my dad got paid and he would come home with the brown paper bag full of chocolate bars, my mum alway got a walnut whip (that was her fav) there were Mars bars, Bounty bars, Galaxy, Crunchie and a butternut snap bar covered in chocolate (forgotten the name) Smarties and Treats (chocolate covered peanuts), but alas no cherry ripe in the UK. What memories, I loved it – my sister and I would wait anxiously for dad to come home to see what specials he carried in the brown paper bag.

  17. These look delish! Not sure if I’ve ever seen those cherry ripe’s before though!

  18. What great neighbours to have!

    Thursday night is actually chocolate night in our house too. Mr Bite likes to have his chocolate in a weekly hit, which I don’t mind at all, except I also quite like to have chocolate on most other days in between Thursday 😛 Little and often is my chocolate motto.

    These slices look gorgeous, perfect for entertaining too 🙂

  19. Now you are just making it really hard for me to stay sugar-free. Those are exactly the sort of slices I love.
    We were brought up on a farm and sweets and chocolates didn’t exist for us either. But I didn’t miss them because I never saw them. But we had lots of plain baking in our house to keep the calorie levels up for an active family. Not so active now though.

  20. Lol! I was chocolate deprived as a child too! The Easter bunny was my only chocolate opportunity throughout the year! I love this slice! I could eat it all myself!

  21. Oh you are a woman after my own heart! Don’t you feel sorry for those poor souls who have never had a Cherry Ripe bar?

  22. “Chockie Night” sounds like the best night ever! I’ve no idea what a couple of the ingredients are but cherries and chocolate go so well together it’s hard for me to imagine a snack bar made of them not being a real treat. I think it’s great, Charlie, that you were able to take a childhood favorite and repurpose it like you did. I don’t have the ingenuity.

  23. We didn’t have a chockie night, but we did get a dollar of lollies every Sunday morning. You slice looks wonderful!

  24. My family was the same as yours and I can only imagine how excited you would have been! I would have been the same 🙂

  25. Chocolate night?! Hmm I might just have to instigate that here. These look fabulous!

  26. Very tasty looking treat Charlie, I love cherries and chocolate together, and as luck would have it, I just picked up some lovely dried cherries for my Christmas do-over stuffing for tonight and I have some left over! I was going to make protein bars for JT but I’m sure he’d like these better.

  27. I need Chockie Night! I better not tell my wife about this – she’ll absolutely insist on it! 😉 When I was growing up chocolate was always a big treat. Although many Saturdays I’d splurge a whole nickel of my allowance on a chocolate bar (yup, that’s what they cost back then, and they were quite a bit larger than the ones you get now). I haven’t heard of Cherry Ripe bars, but they sound delish. Fun post – thanks.

  28. I love it when we can incorporate memories into our current lives with tidbits of food we can share with others. I like the way to took Chockie Night to a whole new level of yumminess! 🙂

  29. Holy smokes, that would have been my childhood dream of heaven! If I was home, I’d make this for my Cherry Ripe-loving dad 🙂

  30. Oh I am absolutely loving thse cherry ripe slices! There’s minimal ingredients so I know I can make these with the nephews. I may even try it with bounty (because I love coconut)!!

  31. What a fun family night idea. My kids would absolutely flip for chockie night. 🙂

  32. That’s a happy and cute memory! How kind and generous your neighbors were. I’d be happy to have a Thursday Chockie night. I love your bars too… looks so good!

  33. Sinfully , crazily easy Charlie. No excuse to not make them really

  34. these bars look great! I love the idea of a specific chocolate night – at my house chocolate night is whenever there’s good tv on!

  35. Chockie night sounds amazing, haha. I still have fond memories of the ‘chocolate game’ we played in primary school where the children would gather in a circle, throw a dice and.. well to be honest I don’t really remember the rules – only that we somehow ended up with chocolate 😛 I love cherry ripes too – this recipe looks great and so easy!

  36. So you parents were like mine, totally unfair towards chocolates! I understand your enthusiasm at that time, and how much I wished I had a friend neighbor like that when I was a kid. Unfortunately we don’t get those chocolates here otherwise I d love to make that. but I would need to hide them from my husband. =D

  37. Even though I’m not really a fan of chocolate and cherries, this seems delicious to me!

  38. Bless your heart…a childhood devoid of chocolate! My mother and sister don’t like chocolate, but I got to indulge, not always, but enough,(and I was a thin kid). Bless your little heart!

  39. Waw! These bars look fantastic, Charlie! So special too!

  40. Chockie Night sounds like a wonderful tradition to me… why didn’t I think of that?! Your reinvention turned out swell and the memories attached to them make them that much sweeter. Great story, Charlie!

  41. I’ve never heard of these candies, but they sound divine! Cherries and chocolate are one of my favorite combinations. Chocolate covered strawberries are a favorite of mine as well! MMMmmmm… 😉 Chockie night might need to be introduced to my household!!

  42. I have left over Cherry Ripe bars and wasnt sure what to do with them. I know now!! Thanks for the recipe. I just feel sorry for the poor folk who don’t know what these are! I didnt know they were predominantly Australian.

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