A no-bake Northern Irish fridge sweet of crushed digestive biscuits, marshmallows and glace cherries bound with condensed milk, rolled in coconut. Named for fifteen of each main ingredient.
Fifteens are a beloved fixture of the Northern Irish home and church-hall tea table, their name a piece of kitchen folk-arithmetic: fifteen digestive biscuits, fifteen marshmallows and fifteen glace cherries, all bound with condensed milk. With no oven required, they were an easy treat for children to make and for busy households to throw together. Rolled into a log, coated in coconut and chilled, they slice into pretty pink-flecked rounds.
Soft and chewy from the marshmallow, with a biscuity sweetness and little bursts of sticky cherry throughout. The coconut coating adds a gentle, fragrant chew at the edges. Unapologetically sweet, it's a nostalgic bite of an Irish childhood tea.
Condensed milk's thick sugar syrup acts as the glue, drawing the dry crumbs and soft marshmallows into a cohesive mass that firms as it chills. No baking is needed because setting comes from refrigeration rather than heat.
Variations
Pressed into a tray and cut into squares instead of a log, with rich tea biscuits, extra cherries, dipped in chocolate
On the Palate
Where Fifteens sits in the Irish flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 10How it's made
8 steps · 15 min
- 14 min
Crush the digestive biscuits into rough, chunky crumbs in a bowl.
- 23 min
Chop the glace cherries and cut the marshmallows in half.
- 32 min
Stir the cherries and marshmallows through the biscuit crumbs.
- 43 min
Pour in condensed milk and mix until everything clumps together.
Watch outMix until the condensed milk binds everything into one sticky mass that holds when pressed — too dry and the log crumbles when sliced.
- 51 min
Tip the mixture onto cling film scattered with desiccated coconut.
- 62 min
Roll it up tightly into a firm log, coating the outside in coconut.
Watch outRoll it up tight into a firm log before chilling — a loose roll won't hold its round shape when it sets and slices.
- 7120 min
Chill in the fridge until fully set, at least two hours or overnight.
- 82 min
Unwrap and slice into thick rounds to serve.
