Gingerbread Rocky Road (2 flavours)

Описание: A festive take on rocky road using gingerbread cookies, gingerbread marshmallows, jellies, butterscotch and toasted nuts. You can follow my recipes or you can use store bought ingredients to come up with your own winning rocky road combo. Full video here:    • Gingerbread Rocky Road (2 flavours)  

INGREDIENTS
Gingerbread, Orange and Almond Rocky Road
500g milk/dark chocolate
250g gingerbread marshmallows (recipe here:)
125g orange jellies/gummies, cut into bite size pieces
75g gingerbread cookies (recipe here:    • Crispy Christmas Gingerbread Cookies-5 Fla...  )
75g lightly toasted blanched almonds, roughly chopped (I kept some whole)

Gingerbread, Butterscotch, Hazelnut and Apple Rocky Road
500g gold/caramel chocolate
250g gingerbread marshmallows (recipe here:)
100g hard butterscotch, cut into smaller pieces (recipe here:    • Crispy Christmas Gingerbread Cookies-5 Fla...  , time stamp 24:08)
80g apple jellies/gummies, cut into bite size pieces
75g gingerbread cookies, broken into bite size pieces (recipe here:    • Crispy Christmas Gingerbread Cookies-5 Fla...  )
75g lightly toasted whole hazelnuts

METHOD
Line a x cm square baking tin with baking paper.

Temper about 500g of chocolate (video how to here:    • Homemade Easter Eggs (with tempering, moul...  , time stamp 4:41).

Add the remaining ingredients to a large bowl and stir to distribute the ingredients. Add about 400g of the chocolate to the bowl and stir well to coat evenly.

Add the rocky road mix to the lined tin and gently press in to all corners. Fill in any gaps with the remaining tempered chocolate. You will have to work quickly as the chocolate will begin to set up. Allow to set up in the fridge before cutting up into pieces.

If using my gingerbread marshmallows in this recipe, I would recommend storing the rocky road in an airtight container in the fridge as the milk powder has been hydrated. If using store bought ingredients, you can store at room temperature as long as it’s not too hot.

Tips
*Use whatever ingredients you think will make a good combination, whether they be homemade or store bought.
*You can go down the traditional route of rocky road by using cherry jellies, peanuts and coconut.
*Ultimately, you can choose to cut up the ingredients to whatever sized pieces you like. When you take a bite of some rocky roads, you get different flavours for different bites, which I think is nice. Also choose any sized tin you like, these are relatively small batches so a small tin is best. If you use a larger tin, it’ll be a thinner rocky road which would be better for kids.
*If you think it could do with a bit more sourness, add some citric acid into the mix if you have no more jellies. Rocky road should be a nice combination of sweet, sour, nutty, squishy, crunchy and chewy.
*Use any chocolate you like too: dark or milk chocolate or a combination of both, gold/caramelised white chocolate, white or ruby. Add a pinch of salt if you think the rocky roads too sweet.
*Tempering chocolate in the microwave is by far the easiest method to temper chocolate, but it still takes a little practice and intuition. The more you temper, the more you'll get familiar with it. Of course you have the option to use compound chocolate
or candy melts, where you just have to melt and set. Compound chocolate uses a form of vegetable fat instead of cocoa butter so it's cheaper to make than real chocolate that contains cocoa butter. Some brands also use a mix of vegetable fats and cocoa butter. To me, real chocolate tastes best as it contains more chocolate flavour as they're using more from the cocoa bean. After the cocoa nibs have been fermented, dried and roasted, they're crushed into what's called a cocoa liquor, which is a combination of cocoa butter and cocoa mass. At this stage they can separate the fats from the solids so you have cocoa butter and cocoa mass or cocoa powder. In real chocolate they'll use both, in compound chocolate the only ingredient they'll use from the cocoa bean is the cocoa powder. In white compound chocolate, not one ingredient comes from the cocoa bean. In real white chocolate though, they use the cocoa butter to help add to the chocolate flavour. As well as providing that mouth feel, shine and snap of the chocolate when it's broken. I still use compound chocolate in some recipes like in some chocolate ganaches. It's cheaper to buy and the flavour is much the same when using a high cocoa content compound chocolate.