Rocky Road

I was just looking through my previous ninety-odd posts thinking that surely I had written about Rocky Road before and I was very surprised to see that I have not. Rocky Road is a much loved treat chez moi, but when you read the ingredients list below, you will see why I refrain from making it too often - it's a real diet-breaker...

They sell an absolutely scrummy version in The Hummingbird Bakery in London and their recipe is in the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook (which I, of course, have in my cookbook collection). However, the Rocky Road recipe that I follow is by my trusted cook, Nigella Lawson. It can be found in her 'Nigella Express' cookbook and this is how it is done:

Ingredients

125g soft unsalted butter

300g best-quality dark chocolate, broken into pieces
3 tbsp golden syrup
200g/7¼oz rich tea biscuits
100g/3½oz mini marshmallows
2 tsp icing sugar, to dust (optional)

50gr dried cranberries (I added these as I fancied a bit of sour in with all that sweetness, I liked it, Cupcake didn't, but she is not a lover of dried fruit .)

Method

1. Heat the butter, chocolate and golden syrup in a heavy-based saucepan over a gentle heat. Remove from the heat, scoop out about 125ml of the melted mixture and set aside in a bowl or jug.

2. Place the biscuits into a plastic freezer bag and crush them with a rolling pin until some have turned to crumbs but there are still pieces of biscuit remaining. I thought I would be clever and wack my bag on the work surface, However, the bag split and sent biscuit shards scattering across the kitchen floor. Not good.. so use a damn rolling pin ok ?

3. Fold the biscuit pieces and crumbs into the melted chocolate mixture in the saucepan, then add the marshmallows. It willl look like this: I also added my scrummy sour cranberries at this point.

4. Mix it all together, until all the biscuit is coated in yummy chocolatey sauce and looks all messy, like this:

5. Tip the mixture into a 24cm/9in square baking tin and smooth the top with a wet spatula. I use a brownie tin.

6. Pour over the reserved 125ml of the melted chocolate mixture and smooth the top with a wet spatula. This gives a lovely solid chocolatey topping.

7. Refrigerate for about two hours or overnight.

8.To serve, cut into 24 fingers and dust with icing sugar.

I didn't actually smooth mine down with a spatula, or cut it into 24 fingers or dust it with icing sugar. Sometimes, Biscuit boy had great wedges and sometimes I had dainty pieces literally the size of my finger. It's your Rocky Road, you eat it how YOU want to.