Week 33 – Rocky Road

This week’s bake was done at 8.30am this morning, in my p-j’s, accompanied by a nice brew - what a way to start a Sunday hey!? This week I decided to make a fave of mine, Rocky Road. There we loads of recipes out there which were fundamentally very similar, so in the end I opted for Nigella Lawson’s Rocky Road Crunch Bars http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/rocky-road-crunch-bars-25. 

I chose this one because it has rich tea biscuits in it. Now they might be plain, humble biscuits but I love them, yep just can’t get enough of them. This is really because my Papa (our family’s, and many other Scottish families' term for Granddad, in this case my mum’s dad) always used to have them with a cup of tea so whenever I have them I remember him. Anyway, getting to use them in a recipe just gave me the chance to stop and remember him and my Gran who sadly passed away early this year. So Papa biscuits at the ready, (I kept one spare to have with my brew!) I got started.

Ingredients

• 125 grams soft butter
• 300 grams best-quality dark chocolate - broken into pieces (As I have said before I am not a huge dark chocolate fan so I used 200g of milk chocolate and 100g of dark)
• 3 tablespoons golden syrup
• 200 grams rich tea biscuits
• 100 grams mini marshmallows (I know all marshmallows are a bit strange and artificial-tasting but I think the mini ones are particularly weird, so I just used normal pink and white marshmallows and cut them up with scissors)
• I added 2 handfuls of dried cranberries, I just thought it might be a nice addition! Sorry Nigella, don’t mean to step on your toes or suggest it’s not a great recipe I just thought I could do with a bit of something extra!
• 2 teaspoons icing sugar (for dusting)

Method

1.    Melt the butter, chocolate and golden syrup in a heavy-based saucepan. Scoop out about 125ml / ½ cup of this melted mixture and put to one side.

2.    Put the biscuits into a freezer bag and then bash them with a rolling pin. You are aiming for both crumbs and pieces of biscuits.

3.    Fold the biscuit pieces and crumbs into the melted chocolate mixture in the saucepan, and then add the marshmallows. (Having the chopped up marshmallows meant they sort of melted a bit at this stage which I think made the mixture a bit gooier than expected but it still turned out OK)

4.    Tip into a foil tray (24cm / 9 inch square); flatten as best you can with a spatula. Pour the reserved 125ml / ½ cup of melted chocolate mixture over the marshmallow mixture and smooth the top.

5.    Refrigerate for about 2 hours or overnight. (2 hours was long enough, so thank goodness you don’t have to wait too long for the tasty treat!)

6.    Cut into 24 fingers and dust with icing sugar by pushing it gently through a tea strainer or small sieve.

Mmmm

 As Nigella says herself these would make a great snack to add to a lunchbox. I proved that they do travel well because I took a couple of slices for my friend Rachel and her husband Alex this afternoon and have just had a text to say they were delicious! It was a super quick tray bake to whip up and a nice way to start a Sunday thinking about my Papa.

Have a happy, baking full week,

Xx Linds xx