ROCKY ROAD

Happy New Year! I hope it is a good one….

One of my new year's resolutions is to eat less sugar however I haven't started off on the right foot as I made this incredibly delicious rocky road for new year's eve. I had a really good day's eating yesterday - a lovely lunch with friends at Cote Brasserie and then I went to a fantastic dinner party which is what I made the rocky road for. The recipe is from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook and it says it makes 12 generous portions….I would say it actually makes 24 generous portions. It took about 20 minutes to make but needed plenty of time for chilling, preferably overnight.

Ingredients for 12-24 portions:

1.4kg milk chocolate, roughly chopped
8 regular sized chewy, filled chocolate bars of your choice such as mars or snickers, roughly chopped
100g marshmallows
120g maltesers
120g munchies 
100g dried apricots, roughly chopped
100g raisins
100g cornflakes
100g chocolate vermicelli (I couldn't buy this in my local shop so just went without)

Put the milk chocolate in a large saucepan over a medium heat and heat until melted and smooth, stirring occasionally. This confused me to be honest as normally I always melt chocolate in a bowl over boiling water in a saucepan, however that wouldn't have worked here as there is just so much chocolate! My chocolate didn't melt into a smooth liquid so I added a few dashes of milk to give it a helping hand. It didn't have to be completely smooth anyway so do not panic if yours isn't!

Put the chocolate bars, marshmallows, maltesers, munchies, apricots, raisins and cornflakes in a large bowl.

Mix together with the melted chocolate and stir until all the ingredients are covered and evenly dispersed.

Press this mixture into a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, using the back of a tablespoon to flatten and compress. The baking tray needs to be around 33cm x 23cm x 5cm in size. 

Sprinkle the chocolate vermicelli all over the top (if you have some). Leave to cool completely and then cover and refrigerate overnight. 

Cut into squares and tuck in!

This is definitely my new favourite treat - they were unbelievably good - all the flavours work so well together, I adored the combination of the chocolate, the dried fruit and the cornflakes. Wow! I am always nervous about other people eating my cooking but I am very grateful to say that everyone at the dinner party was a fan! The ingredient list isn't set in stone and you could definitely mix it up - i.e. add crunchies rather than maltesers, rolos rather than munchies etc. The choice is yours!