Rocky Road

I have finally finished Uni for Christmas! I now have five weeks of obsessive baking ahead of me, once we get our oven back!

After a week of excessive studying, all I needed was some form of baking to relieve some stress. As I'm mostly limited to my microwave, Rocky Roads seemed the best option! I get the impression that, as long as they have chocolate and biscuits, Rocky Roads can have anything you like in them. Cue the creativity!

Unfortunately, pictures are limited as I made around 20 and most of them went with my dad to work. As my tray is quite small, the recipe gave me 12 decent size squares and a few in some cupcake cases. So, by the time I got up the next morning, all of the good ones had gone, hence the rubbish photos!

Needless to say, they were delicious. I've only ever had a pre-made, packaged rocky road (deprived childhood?) which are soft but these ones were chocolatey, crunchy and gooey, an all round hit!

We also got around to putting up our Christmas tree, Merry Christmas everyone!

Rocky Roads- recipe adapted from Good To Know

Ingredients:

100g unsalted butter

225g plain chocolate, broken into pieces

2tbsp golden syrup

2tbsp cocoa powder

2tbsp caster sugar

100g Maltesers

100g mixed milk and white chocolate chips- I used half choc chips and half fudge chunks

100g mini marshmallows

225g ginger biscuits, broken into pieces- I used digestive biscuits and found this was too many

Icing sugar to dust

Method:

Line a 20cm (8in) square cake tin with baking parchment.

In a small pan, heat the butter, plain chocolate, golden syrup, caster sugar, cocoa powder and stir together with a wooden spoon. Once melted together, leave to cool for 10 mins- This worked brilliantly in my microwave in 10 second bursts, painfully slow but worth it!

In a large bowl, place the Maltesers, milk and white chocolate chip, mini marshmallows, ginger biscuits and bind together with the melted chocolate sauce.
Pour into the lined tin and leave to set in the fridge for a minimum of 2 hrs.
Remove from cake tin and slice into 16 snack-sized rocky road bars- depends on how generous you are!
Dust the rocky road with icing sugar to serve.

Enjoy!

Another Office Bake

Blog posts at the minute are few and far in between, I currently do not have an oven!! This is proving most difficult, especially as I have a long list of christmas bakes up my sleeve. Luckily, I managed to fit in some baking for my brother before the oven was removed and, as a thank you, received some wonderful flowers!

As always, apologies for the useless photos! Anyway, I made a chocolate victoria sponge not too long ago and it went down really well, better than any cake I normally make! So, when my brother asked me to make some cakes for work, I decided to make another sponge.

This time, I put vanilla buttercream in the middle and chocolate around the edges. I was a bit worried that the two buttercreams wouldn't work together as the vanilla one was quite strong so I had a taste (a big spoonful of the two, I can't lie) and they were lovely! I don't think it looked as good as the first time I made it, but apparently it went down really well :)

I also made some chocolate fudge cupcakes with chocolate fudge buttercream. Overkill, maybe, but they were really lovely and the fudge melted into the cake. I used my favourite cupcake recipe and substituted the white chocolate for fudge pieces.

I put them in festively coloured cupcake cases, and topped them with Betty Crocker chocolate fudge buttercream. I know this is cheating, but its just sooo tasty!!

I'm still struggling with my icing, if i do it from the middle outwards, it doesn't cover the whole cake. If I do it from the outside, I don't get a good peak, see what I mean?

They went down a storm, which is all I can ask for, I'll just keep practising!

Chocolate Victoria Sponge- adapted from Mary Berry's Baking Bible

Ingredients

For the sponge:

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

3 tablespoons boiling water

225g softened butter

225g caster sugar

4 large eggs

225g self raising flour

2 level teaspoons baking powder

For the filling and topping: I found this wasn't enough and made separate batches for the filling and topping

50g softened butter

175g sifted icing sugar

1 tablespoon milk

-Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 160C/Gas 4

-Grease two 20cm sandwich tins and line the base of each with baking parchment

-Mix the cocoa and water in a mixing bowl then leave to cool slightly

-Measure the remaining ingredients into the bowl and beat until thoroughly blended- I've previously found that this method doesn't create a good rise so used the creaming method which worked brilliantly.

-Divide the mixture between the tins and level them out. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes or until well risen. The tops of the cakes should be springy when touched

-Leave to cool in the tins for a while then turn out and leave to cool on a wire rack.

-For the buttercream, beat the butter, icing sugar and milk until smooth- I found more milk and cocoa powder was necessary!

-Once the cake is cool, sandwich the cakes together with the buttercream and spread the rest on top- or cover the sides like I did

Enjoy!