RASPBERRY ROCKY ROAD

This recipe for raspberry rocky road is one of my favourites. It also seems to be a favourite of most of my friends and family, most notably my sister in law, Sami. When she was pregnant with my nephew last year she would request it ‘for the baby’ and I would make it and post it to Scotland for her.

A couple of days ago, Sami told me the wonderful news that she is pregnant again! So she will be ‘needing’ more raspberry rocky road for the new baby.

Personally, I find the combination of dark chocolate and raspberries one of life’s most incredible pairings. The sweet tartness of the raspberries works so well with the intensity of the dark chocolate. I just love it.

This recipe is extremely simple and takes just a few minutes to make. It came about when I was making my Gran’s rocky road. She used to make it for my brothers and I when we were young. I have amended it over the years, trying out different ingredients. Traditionally, rocky road contains marshmallows and cherries but I’ve also made it with Maltesers, Crunchies and Chocolate Orange. Then one day I had some very ripe raspberries that needed using up so I decided to add them into the chocolate and biscuit mix. This turned out to be a winner. At first I just refrigerated the mix and then I decided it might be better with a layer of chocolate over the top. So here is the final result…

Ingredients
200g soft unsalted butter
400g best-quality dark chocolate, broken into pieces (you can also mix milk and dark if you don’t like dark on its own)
3-4 tbsp golden syrup (this is totally personal, I love Golden Syrup so I add a fair amount. Just go with your instincts)
200g Rich Tea biscuits
1 punnet raspberries, roughly 150g

First, line a small-ish baking tray about 23cm/8inch, or around that size. You will get roughly 20 squares out of that. Obviously if you want more, you can use a bigger tin and you can increase the ingredients.

Simply heat the butter, chocolate and golden syrup in a heavy-based saucepan over a gentle heat.

Remove from the heat, and leave to cool. At this point I scoop out about 150ml of the melted mixture and set aside.

Then place the Rich Tea biscuits into a plastic freezer bag and crush them with a rolling pin until most is turned to crumbs but there are still pieces of biscuit remaining.

Fold the crushed biscuit pieces into the melted chocolate mixture in the saucepan.

Then add a handful of the raspberries and stir through gently.

Transfer the mixture into the baking tin and smooth, pushing it into the corners.

Then pour over the reserved 150ml of the melted chocolate mixture and smooth the top.

I then like to top with some whole raspberries as it makes it look pretty.

Pop into the fridge for about two hours or ideally overnight.  To serve, cut into squares, preferably with a raspberry in the middle of each square.

And there you have it…gloriously decadent tasting chocolate and raspberry treats.

I have a feeling I’m going to be making a lot of these over the next 6 months…