Rocky road

 It seems like an age since we have done any baking together, what with the big move and settling into our new home.  So it was time to dust off our pinnies and open the baking cupboard to see what we could make.  With Ella's love of chocolate and Sophie love of marshmallows Rocky road sprang to mind.

we did not have any mini marshmallows but never fear Sophie got chopping with some scissors and chopped some up followed by bashing some digestives into little bits.   After we melted the hot chocolate mix and poured this over the goodies in the tray and sprinkling with candy stars this was left it set before chopping up and serving.  Double yum from both Ella and Sophie.


150g mini marshmallows
150g digestives broken
100g Brazil nuts roughly chopped

place all of the above into the greased tray

125g butter
3 tbsp golden syrup
150g dark chocolate
150g milk chocolate

Melt all the above and pour over the biscuits and marshmallows add sprinkles over the top and allow to set in the fridge for 2 hours.

How to make Marshmallows

Sophie and I got busy in the kitchen today making some lovely fluffy squishy tasty marshmallows.

Recipe

100g Cornflour

100g icing sugar

70g tropical juice or any other fruit juice to flavour

50g water

4 egg whites

200g caster sugar

85g liquid glucose

4g gelatine leaves

Slowly whisk egg white, while these are whisking, put the juice in a pan and bring to the boil, then add the water, sugar and glucose.  Bring this to the boil until it reaches 128 c 

 As the temperature rises of the juice syrup mix turn up the egg white till they form medium peaks, once the syrup has reached 128 c pour this very slowly in a thin drizzle into the whisking eggs, make sure you turn up the speed of the whisk to its highest setting, otherwise you could cook the egg whites.

Squeeze out the water in the gelatine leaves and drop these into the egg whites also add a little colouring at this stage and continue whisking at a high setting until the mixture reaches room temperature, this will take a while.

While your waiting for the mixture to whisk and cool measure and sift out the cornflour and icing sugar then get your deep pan coat in a little oil sides and base and sift over with the icing sugar mix.

  turn your mixture out into the pan and even out and cover with more icing sugar and cornflour mixture

 leave the mixture on the side for 1 hour then cover with cling film and leave for 6 hours after this use some of the icing sugar mix and coat a chopping board. ready for turning out the marshmallows. Use a knife coated in the icing sugar mix to cut around the edge of the pan and spatular should get the rest out.

make sure you have your bowl of icing sugar and corn flour mix to hand and as you cut pieces of marshmallow toss these in the sugary mix one at a time to make sure they are coated and don't stick together

I even tried using a cookie cutter to press out some shapes which were fun but left lots of bits and bobs of marshmallow so they had to be eaten up and home made marshmallows are so nice Sophie had some in her frozen yoghurt and i might even try some in a hot chocolate.