A Ginger Rocky Road

I have been meaning to make Rocky Road for years and years now, and like so many things have only just got round to it. I don't think I've ever even eaten Rocky Road before, it just seems like a jumble of random things melted together and set, but actually, it's pretty tasty! I should really have known that I was going to like it because in essence, it's very similar to these Chocolate Fruit and Nut Cases - a Delia Smith recipe that I've made countless times and enjoy very much indeed.

There are certainly plenty of recipes out there for Rocky Road, it appears to have increased in popularity over recent years. I decided that I would adapt a recipe from a recipe card I received as part of a set called 'The Food Files'. There are quite a few interesting looking recipes in this collection, which is comprised of recipes from a number of famous faces of the celebrity/cooking world (Rose Elliot, Fay Ripley, Richard Corrigan) and a few from food companies (Innocent, Gu, Hummingbird Bakery) and span a range of sweet and savoury cooking. It's not the kind of thing I'd choose to buy, but I ordered some (ahem..) books from The Book People a while ago and they had an offer whereby if you bought two cookery titles you were sent a set of recipe cards free of charge. 

Anyway, enough about where the recipe came from and more about the food. I adapted the recipe slightly to allow for the ingredients I had in my house and my tastes so here I give you

Ginger Rocky Road
Ingredients
400g dark chocolate (70%), broken into small pieces (but see below)
100g milk chocolate (34%), broken into small pieces
75g unsalted butter
30g (1 1/2tbsp) golden syrup
100g ginger biscuits, broken into pieces but not smashed
50g mini marshmallows
50g raisins

Method

- Grease and line an 8"/20cm square baking tin.

- Melt 300g of the dark chocolate and all of the milk chocolate with the butter and golden syrup. The recipe method was to melt the butter and syrup and pour it over the chocolate, stirring until it melted, but this really doesn't work as there is so much chocolate. I did as I was told, but then ended up microwaving it in short blasts until the chocolate had actually melted. I'll leave it up to you how you go about melting it. In a pan over hot water would work too.

- Add the broken biscuits, marshmallows and raisins to the melted chocolate and mix well so everything is coated.

- Pour into the prepared tin, level off and leave to set in the fridge (I left mine overnight). The recipe suggests a couple of hours.

- Melt the remaining chocolate and spread it over the biscuit/chocolate base. Place back in the fridge to harden and then cut into pieces.

Tips

- I found that the remaining 100g of chocolate was not enough to cover the whole surface area of the rocky road, and certainly not to cover it and give the depth suggested by the accompanying picture (don't you hate it when the pictures lie to you...). I'd suggest at least 150g extra for the topping, and more if you want a decent layer.

- To cut the hard rocky road into neat squares, boil a kettle full of water (or use hot water from the hot tap) and pour over the blade of your knife. Working quickly, dry the blade and make the first cut. Wipe the melted chocolate off the blade and you may have enough heat to make a second cut. Again, wipe the blade, and then run more water over it to heat it up again and repeat the process until your rocky road is cut up.

Were they yummy? Yes. I think it goes without saying that the end result here is the product of the quality of the ingredients you use and I used Green and Black's Cooking Chocolate for both the milk and dark parts. Obviously, use your favourite, I happen to like G&B! Infinitely customisable - use your preferred biscuits, dried fruit and ratio of dark:milk chocolate to suit your tastes. I liked the different textures - melty chocolate, crunchy biscuits, soft marshmallows and chewy raisins - it all worked really well together. I think cranberries would work well too, or crystallised ginger.

Would I make it again? For myself, probably not - I'm lazy and it's easier to just have a few squares of chocolate, a handful of raisins and a couple of biscuits by my side and graze on them all simultaneously. Or I might make Delia's Fruit and Nut cases again - they're very tasty and less faff (and they are delicious straight out of the freezer). However, these would probably make a good gift and were very tasty!

Since this rocky road is based on ginger biscuits I'm going to enter it as a rather last minute entry for the One Ingredient challenge, which this month is Ginger. Yum, I do love ginger! One Ingredient is hosted by Laura of How to Cook Good Food and Nazima of Franglais Kitchen. Nazima is the host this month.