Smarties Rocky Road

Smarties Rocky Road that I made for the church bake sale.

Round one, provide 100 cupcake for the church bazaar. The mission being to make them even better than the previous batch of pumpkin and cinnamon cupcakes.

The baking day arrives and Ted is still off preschool with chicken pox even though he’s barely showing any sign of ever having it.

With the so-called assistance of my little helper, I still manage to churn out four double batches of cupcakes (two vanilla, two chocolate) by lunchtime, spend 2 hours in Sainsbury’s and then decorate them in around 90 minutes in time to drop off.

I had a little of the dulce de leche buttercream left over and so used this with vanilla for the first half and then chocolate buttercream for the chocolate bases. Toppings were Dr Oetker Christmas novelty shapes (shown above), Dr Oetker jazzies (below left) and Sainsbury’s chocolate coated crispies (below right).

Fast forward to the preschool disco one week later and I’m feeling fairly sure of myself. We have this mass cupcake production thing pretty much sewn up I think. I don’t even start baking until 4 hours before the party.

And then this happens. I only have plain flour and think “it’s ok I’ll add baking powder so it’s same as self raising”. Not done this before and I should have played it safe and popped to Spar. My cupcakes exploded and had big holes inside. They taste ok but look messy and even if I disguised their shape with icing, they crumble badly when peeling the wrappers off. Not a great impression to give as “the lady who makes cakes.”

Frantically, with less than one hour to go, I opt for a replacement.

What do you get for being a smartie pants trying to make your cupcakes at the last minute?

Smarties rocky road. It’s one step up from cornflake crispies but the bottom line was I knew the children at the disco would enjoy them. Which is what counts.

Smartie Rocky Road

Makes around 50 squares, takes around 40-45 minutes from start to finish.

Ingredients:
2 x 200g bars white chocolate
1 x 200g bar milk chocolate
2/3 box Coco Pops or Nesquik Puffed Chocolate Pops Cereal
1/2 tub glace cherry halves
handful of raisins
weird stuff left over in cupboard i.e. remnants of packets of flaked almonds, dried fruit etc (use your discretion here)
75g mini marshmallows
2 tubes Smarties or about 8 boxes of funsize mini Smarties (sugar coated chocolate jelly bean type sweets)

You will need two 8″ square tins lined with baking parchment.

Directions:
1. Do not panic.
2. Break the white chocolate into squares then blitz in the microwave, give it around one minute then 20 seconds at a time stirring in between so it doesn’t get hot spots and burn.
3. Decant the cereal, cherries, raisins, mini marshmallows and anything you’ve decided to scrabble out of your baking archive into a large mixing bowl.
4. Tip melted chocolate onto the dry ingredients and combine.
5. Press the mixture down into your baking tins.
6. Melt the milk chocolate in the microwave too. Pour over the white chocolate/crispy pop mixture.
7. Scatter over the Smarties.
8. Allow to cool then freeze for 20 minutes (or leave in fridge for 2 hours if you are blessed with time).
9. Cut into 25 squares per tin and throw haphazardly into Ikea storage tubs lined with coloured paper napkins. Run to party.

Rocky road is so easy to make, and I have several versions:

White Aero Rocky Road

White Chocolate Ginger Nuts Rocky Road

But best of all, my stunning Crunchie Rocky Road