Snowy Rocky Road

 A festive version of my easy-to-make rocky road recipe with white chocolate, biscuits, marshmallows, dried cranberries and pistachio nuts.

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It was summer when I last posted a recipe (these very tasty summer fruits flapjacks), yet if you looked at the weather here in North Wales then you wouldn’t know it. It remains cloudy and rainy, yet actually not too cold. I commute by train to work so I enjoy the weather being mild, but at Christmas I would prefer it to be a bit crisper to get me into the seasonal spirit. I finished work for the year last Friday, so decided what better way to feel Christmassy than by making these snowy rocky roads to eat whilst watching ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’.

For those of you who are new to Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen I’m Jon, Charlotte’s husband, who helps out behind the scenes, occasionally writing a recipe or two and more regularly being chief food taster (and critic!). My snowy rocky road recipe is a festive take on my earlier rocky road recipe, but uses my favourite ingredient – white chocolate!

Firstly, to put the ‘rocky’ into rocky road, the marshmallows and biscuits are two ingredients that need to be kept from the original recipe.  The ‘road’ however is made of white chocolate to make it look snowy (actually it could be argued it makes it look dangerously icy(!), to make it look truly snowy you can sprinkle some icing sugar on top). After these core ingredients you can add in pretty much anything you like, it would be tough to make it not taste nice! In this recipe I have used dried cranberries and blueberries as they are in keeping with the festive theme, whilst the pistachios add a little bitterness to contrast against the sweet white chocolate whilst also providing a green festive colouring.

In my earlier rocky road recipe I provided some tips, a summary of which are:

• Don’t break up the biscuits too small, they help to provide the crunch.
• Freeze the marshmallows beforehand if you want to prevent them going gooey when you add them to the warmed chocolate.
• Set aside some melted chocolate to pour over the mixture in the tray, as this helps to fill in any gaps and provides a slightly smoother look on top.

Keep to these simple tips and the recipe is pretty much foolproof. If you have a different size tin to the one I used (20cmx26cm) then you can scale the ingredients up or down proportionally. Alternatively, if the tin you have is bigger than mine, you can create a barrier using tinfoil. To develop the recipe I made four batches at the same time in the same tin, using tinfoil as the barrier between them and using roughly quarter of the ingredients shown below for each batch.

Snowy Rocky Road

Active Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours 15 minutes

Makes 12 square pieces

Ingredients

• 600g white chocolate
• 150g rich tea biscuits
• 30g mini marshmallows
• 200g dried berry mix (we used a mix of cranberries and blueberries)
• 50g pistachio nuts

Method

1. If you want the marshmallows to hold their shape, then put them in the freezer for a couple of hours beforehand (ensuring they are separated from each other).
2. Melt the white chocolate (600g) in a pan on a very low heat, stirring regularly to ensure it doesn’t burn.
3. Once the chocolate has melted set aside 150ml to be used later, leave the rest in the pan but turn off the heat.
4. Crush the biscuits (150g) into small pieces (but not too small, have a look at the original rocky road post for an idea of size if you are unsure) and fold into the chocolate mixture in the pan.
5. Mix in the dried berries (200g), mini marshmallows (30g) and pistachio nuts (50g).
6. Lay out baking parchment onto a tray (20cmx26cm) and spoon the mixture onto it. Press down firmly on the mixture to compress it so it forms an even layer.
7. Pour the 150ml of melted chocolate, which you set aside earlier, evenly across the top of the mixture. The idea is to fill in any gaps with it, and create a slightly smoother top surface. The liquid should only just cover all of the surface, so you may need to spread it with a spoon or spatula to distribute it evenly.
8. Finally put it in the fridge to set. It will be set enough to eat in about two hours.
9. Once set, cut it into squares and serve.

This is the estimated nutritional information per biscuit (excluding any icing/sprinkles). Please refer to my guide to Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen nutritional information if you want to learn more about how this is calculated.