Rocky Road
If you’re American, Rocky Road is a kind of ice cream, but if you’re Australian it’s a kind of sweet treat, popular at Christmas.
The Australian Rocky Road is said to have begun back in the 1850’s gold rushes, when sweets imported from the UK and elsewhere had been damaged in transit on the long sea voyage (which took months). Cunning entrepreneurs salvaged these sweets and mixed them with local nuts and chocolate and sold it as “Rocky Road” after the lumps and bumps in the rough roads leading to the goldfields. The American ice-cream version began in 1929, during the Great Depression, but has similar ingredients, except it’s an ice-cream. I have no idea if they’re related.
Today, typical Australian Rocky Road will be made of milk chocolate, nuts, marshmallows, dried fruits and coconut. The UK also has its own versions, which often contains broken biscuits (cookies). New Zealanders often do that too, and also add Turkish Delight. to the mix. Companies here do manufacture Rocky Road, but many people make it at home, as it’s very easy, as well as delicious.
I’ve always found the Rocky Road I’ve tasted to be a bit too sweet for me, but this year I was given some made by a specialist gourmet company. I was thinking of serving it with coffee at the end of a Christmas lunch with friends, so I sliced off a little for a taste test. And then had another slice, and another, and suddenly it was all gone. (blush) Yes, it was good!
So I decided to make my own version, just using what I had in the cupboard. I melted some dark chocolate, toasted some flaked almonds, and mixed them in along with salted mixed nuts, dried cranberries and dried cherries which I cut in half. No marshmallows, as I didn’t have any, and don’t much like them anyway. I made up the recipe as I went so I don’t have quantities—sorry. I just kept adding as much as I thought the melted chocolate could carry. Then I tipped the mix into a square pan lined with baking paper, pressed it flattish, sprinkled it with coconut and let it set.
In the end, I almost forgot to serve it. People had finished their tea and coffee when I remembered, and so I brought it out expecting few people would eat it.
We’d had a biiig lunch of delicious Indian hors d’oeuvres and small mushroom tarts, followed by quiche Lorraine and two yummy salads, then pavlova with cream and berries and a beautiful platter of fresh fruits, and finally some mince tarts. (I only made the pavlova — we all brought food.)
But when I put out my Not-Quite-Rocky-Road, the dish got passed around and everyone ate a piece and then the dish kept circulating and most people ate two or three pieces — some more. So of course I was delighted. In the photo on the left is all that was left — that’s a small bread and butter plate.
My friends also said they liked it better than the sweeter versions of Rocky Road and decided the dark chocolate (instead of milk chocolate), the toasted nuts and the salted mixed nuts, along with the lack of sweet gooey marshmallows made all the difference. So I plan to make it again in the next few days to try to work out the proportions of everything: otherwise I’ll forget. Plus my friends have asked for the recipe.
And here’s the pavlova I made. I sprinkled it with icing sugar (powdered sugar) as despite the heat, we still want a hint of snow for Christmas. It all got eaten.
I baked the meringue the night before and left it overnight in the oven. Then on the day, all I had to do was whip the cream, and pile on the berries.
Some of my friends had only had the kind of pavlova where the meringue base is crisp all through, but I like it to have a crisp shell and a kind of marshmallow texture inside. If you want that, you just have to add a little white vinegar to the mix at the end. It’s magic!
I use this recipe
and highly recommend it. It might look tricky and complicated but it’s pretty straightforward to make and she has a video to show you exactly how. Plus there’s a toggle on the recipe to convert to US measurements. I don’t sweeten the cream as much as she does though — a teaspoon or two is enough for me.
I make a similar one, but with mixed peel chopped, cashews and brazil nuts chopped, jelly beans, and a layer of almond marzipan through the middle. My pav is a bog standard one with 4 egg whites and I use the yolks later for lemon spread/honey. Or lime if I have them.
Have a Happy Christmas and we look forward to visiting with Marcus when he is available :)
Sounds yummy, Elizabeth. I love the way we all tweak our recipes to our personal taste and then they become “traditional” <g>
Thanks. xx
My mother-in-law can’t seem to make a pavlova without kiwi…. and now it’s traditional. <g> I can’t eat them. Neighbours have family from Alice Springs visiting. They are hoping for a white northern Christmas!