The Rocky Road to Christmas

Several people have recently asked for the Rocky Road recipe that I use, well here it is. The basic recipe was given to me by a friend but the adaptions and suggestions are mine, hope you enjoy all the variations.

Basic mixture:-

125g/4½oz                soft butter

300g/10½oz              best quality dark chocolate

3x15ml/tblsp            golden syrup

200g/7oz                  plain biscuits

100g/3½oz                marshmallows

You can use mini marshmallows but I prefer to tear up big ones into several irregular pieces, I roll them in the biscuit crumbs so they do not stick together.

Substitutions:-

·         Vary the biscuits, I tend to use digestives, but you can use any kind you like.

·         Replace some of the biscuit pieces with honeycomb or maltesers.

·         Vary the chocolate, either 70% cocoa solids for a rich dense mixture, ordinary dark chocolate, or milk chocolate if you like it sweeter.

Depending on what I feel like I add variations of the following to the mixture:-

200g/7oz                  glace cherries, halved

100g/3½oz                desiccated coconut

200g/7oz                  nut pieces, pecans are particularly nice.

·         Melt the butter chocolate and golden syrup together, if you want a softer topping take out about 125ml of the mix and put to one side, if you want a harder toping then ignore this step.

·         Put the biscuits in a freezer bag and bash with a rolling pin until you have both crumbs and pieces of biscuit.

·         Mix the melted chocolate mixture and all the dry goods together.

·         Line a 9inch square tin with foil, pour the mixture in and press down evenly.

·         Either pour over the reserved chocolate mixture or melt some fresh chocolate for a more solid topping, or leave plain and dust with icing sugar when solid.

·         Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, but preferably overnight.

·         Turn out and cut into 2 or 3inch squares.

If you want to make and serve it as a cake then line a 7inch round tin with foil, refrigerate overnight then turn out and decorate, I usually use dark chocolate to cover it and white chocolate for detail.

For the softer version I use well crushed digestive biscuits, ordinary dark chocolate and add in the glace cherries and coconut then put in a foil lined 10inch square tin so it is also a bit flatter.

ENJOY!!!