hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with rocky road
that's right i thought i was going to show you how to make a famous candy
based on a famous ice cream but as it turns out it's actually the other way
around the ice cream flavor was actually
inspired by an australian candy that goes by the same name
which used the same signature ingredients of chocolate marshmallows
and nuts and probably a little touch of vegemite
but regardless this is super easy to make
and would make for an absolutely wonderful edible gift for the upcoming
holidays so with that let's go ahead and get
started with a bowl full of chocolate chips
and please do me a favor and use dark chocolate okay i think the only way to
mess this up is to use milk chocolate and of course we always want to taste a
little bit to make sure it's okay and then to our chocolate chips we will
add some cubed up unsalted butter at which point i do like to give this a
quick mix since we're going to melt all this over hot water
and i feel like some of the butter should be underneath and not just
sitting all on top and then last but not least we'll add a
couple teaspoons of maple syrup which i believe is supposed to be corn
syrup except i don't stock that so i'm going with the maple syrup which
seems to work out just fine and then what we'll do is place that
over a saucepan that has about an inch of hot water
set over the lowest heat setting you have okay a few tiny bubbles here
they're okay but we don't want this boiling or
simmering and that's it we will just leave that to gradually melt
and please do not try to stir this too early okay you might see some of the
butter and a few your chocolate chips start to melt and you'll get all excited
and you want to give it a stir but don't we want this all melted before there's
any movement and while we're waiting for that we can
review our two other main ingredients which would be some kind of nuts plus
mini marshmallows and as far as the marshmallows i'm going
to use two kinds some little white ones that are basically white sugar flavored
and then i found some pink ones that i cut up which i believe are pink sugar
flavored and then as far as the nuts go i like a
nice roasted whole salted almond but of course if you'd rather use
something else go ahead i mean you are after all the highway
patrol of what goes in our rocky road mixing bowl
and things like peanuts or walnuts or cashews will also work beautifully
and then the other thing we should prep ahead of time is to plastic wrap an 8
inch by 8 inch cake pan which i've done here and that's it by
now we can go back and check our butter and chocolate
which as you can see is nice and melty and once that's happened we can take a
spatula and give this a mix okay going a little bit slowly at first
and then as all that butter emulsifies in we can go ahead and stir a little
more quickly until we end up with this relatively
soft sort of shiny fudgy looking mixture and that's it we'll go ahead and remove
that from the heat and quickly stir in our nuts and
marshmallows and don't pull a mussel but we do want
to mix this up fairly quickly since as you know when melted chocolate
cools it thickens up and by the way pink and brown is a very
very underrated color combination so if you can find those i think they do
make a nice addition as of course with anything else you decide to throw in
this all right other kinds of nuts dried
fruit etc okay as long as you keep the same proportions between the chocolate
and the chunks really anything goes and then what we'll
do once we're confident everything has been completely coated
is quickly transfer that into our pan and while we do want to make sure
everything's pushed into the corners and then we end up with a nice
consistent even layer we do not under any circumstances want to
smooth out and press down the top all right this stuff is called rocky
road not uneven pavement so we want to try to preserve a rough as
possible texture on the top and that's it once that's been spread
out and definitely not smoothed over we will simply let that cool down to
room temp before covering it with some plastic
and then popping it in the fridge until it's very very well chilled and firm
which is going to make it so much easier to cut as you're about to see
so once our rocky road has been thoroughly chilled we'll take it out of
the fridge and remove it from the pan and i'm not sure how familiar you are
with actual rocky roads but having grown up in the mean streets
of shortsville new york believe me i was around my fair share of them
and they tend to be very dusty and dirty i mean come on you can't run one of
those street cleaners on a road this rocky
which is why before slicing i like to sprinkle some cocoa over the top
and then what we'll do once we've dirtied that up a little is take a long
thin knife and we'll carefully cut this up into 16
pieces which as you can see i like to do right on the plastic
although there are pros and cons to that method right the main pro is it's going
to be a lot easier to clean my cutting board
but the main con is you might get some plastic stuck underneath the candy
and people spitting out pieces of plastic is never a great look
so once you cut this be careful to look for that and if we use the perfect
proportion of chocolate and nuts in marshmallows you should get
some beautifully clean cuts all right check it out i find this stuff
absolutely gorgeous not to mention incredibly addictive to
eat okay i'm really not a big sweets guy and almost never eat candy but once you
start with this stuff it's hard to stop and i think the secret here is that play
between the really sweet marshmallow and then that bittersweet dark chocolate
of course elevated texturally by those salty crunchy roasted almonds
rice so simple yet so satisfying so i very much enjoyed that first one
and then i went ahead and arranged some on a platter so i could take some
pictures and of course eat another one and i
don't mean to surface shame people but here you can get a great look at why
we really do want to leave that top as irregular and rough as possible
i mean to me that just completes the proper visual effect
speaking of which after i finish that second piece
i went ahead and stacked these up for some more pictures as is required by the
food blogger commandments okay when it comes to cookies or candies
or bars thou shall stack but anyway whether you're going to make these for
yourself or maybe to give as an edible gift or
hopefully both i really do hope you give these a try
soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts
a printable written recipe and much more info as usual
and as always enjoy
you