Tuesday 21 January 2014

Rocky Road Crunch Bars

So, don't know if you heard, but during December, our little family won the jackpot. The big one. 

Oh yes.

We won the nursery Christmas raffle hamper! This luxurious cardboard box contained a variety of quality items, such as booze, plum pudding, more packets of biscuits than you can shake a stick at, AND creamed corn. Seriously, these other parents know how to provide a party.

One of the biscuit containers was rich tea biscuits, a personal favourite for dunking in tea. BUT last week, a colleague of mine brought in some "cooking chocolate" that she didn't want. She said it would go off before she would eat it so she was giving it to me. Yes, I had a hard time understanding that, too.

So when I have a cupboard full of rich tea biscuits and chocolate, you know what recipe hammers its way into my head? Rocky Road. Or specifically, Nigella Lawson's Rocky Road Crunch Bars. I also like to think of it as Royal Wedding Cake.

I had invited a fellow mother of three over for a cup of tea and decided the presentation of this treat would distract from the messiness of the household (not that a fellow mother of three young ones would really be critical) and my daughter was more than happy to help whip up a batch of these calorific babies.


 Truly a 20th century processed innovation, this one.


First, we broke up the chocolate in a bowl and added a big blob of butter and some golden syrup.


While it melted in the microwave, I cut up some marshmallows.



My daughter happily volunteered to help with stirring the melting chocolate mixture.


And she also enjoyed taking out some aggression on the packet of biscuits. In fact, she managed to split a hole in the bag and even offered to eat the biscuits that had fallen out. She's very thoughtful that way.


Mmm...butter and chocolate...


I took out a scoop to save for the top of the mix once it was in its tray. Annoyingly, my 125ml measure is round at the bottom, so I had to create an improvised balancing structure for it while I mixed up the rest.


In went the biscuits, just lightly crushed so as to leave plenty of big pieces.


Then my glamorous assistant added the marshmallows.


A few cherries went in, as I had a few languishing in a tub and I want to clear up some space in the cupboard.


Some mixing was done to coat everything.


Then I poured it into the dish lined with greaseproof paper and smoothed it out best I could.


On the top went the remains of the chocolate, butter, and syrup mix. Into the fridge it went


A couple hours later I took it out and it looked like this.


The overhang of the paper meant I could lift it quickly out for easy cutting on the counter top.


But first a bit of icing sugar went on.


I then just put the slices right back into the dish I'd used.


Except for the quality control samples, of course.


This recipe does have a habit of mysteriously disappearing when left out...


The link to the full recipe is here.

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