I was desperate. I couldn't fry an egg without ruining it and my models missed the cache helper. Rails.cache completely ignored the perform_caching setting and my server crashed frequently until it ultimately committed suicide.

My whole life changed. My dog only poops outside and my models can use Rails.cache.fetch under development mode easily.

gem install blackhole-store

In your development.rb file add the following lines

require 'active_support/cache/blackhole_store'
config.cache_store = :blackhole_store

Then you can use the underlying cache store without worrying about the perform_caching setting

class Product
    def self.total_products
        Rails.cache.fetch("total_products", :expires_in => 2.hours) do 
            Product.count
        end
    end
end