Rocky Road Bars

Hope you all are gearing up for Christmas and New Year.  Do you have the tradition of exchanging Christmas gifts to you near and dear ones? Well, I didn’t actually until I moved to U.K. The only time I exchanged gifts was when we played the game of Christmas friend/ secret Santa in school and college and that was the most exciting bit for me during those days. Now exchanging gifts is like a tradition for me especially for my close friends. This year we kicked of our Christmas ritual a bit early. BY “WE” I meant my fun gal gang, Nisha( My kitchenantics),Gayatri ( mummyandme ) and Suchi (Kitchen karma). We met for a Sunday brunch to exchange gifts in a cosy place!

We were all so excited about the whole gift thing and couldn’t wait for it. I have to say I was really gobsmacked to see all gifts ! They were all home- made and they were all packed and wrapped with so much love! Perfect gifts in all sense .. Gayatri took a lot of effort by giving us a  basket full of homemade goodies. Homemade panettone, chocolates, mulling syrup, garam masala salt and stolen! That was the first time I ate  stolen and panettone ever and I couldn’t stop eating it!

Picture courtsey - Gayatri

Suchi’s homemade body scrub and lip balm came in cute bottles with personalised label and I just couldn’t stop admiring them. I took my lip balm to work and showed it off to my work mates and they all went cooing and awing seeing it! Suchi also gave a bag of cookies which were bursting with flavours…I took it to work and shared it with my friends and they couldn’t stop with just one.

Nisha gifted us  home made candles in a pretty vintage cup along with some bath bombs in three diffrent flavours! I am saving those cuties for Christmas holidays to have a spa day!

My spa gifts from Nisha and Suchi !

And now coming to my gift …..it was a small  bag of rocky roads and  I packed them in a vintage kind of tins J . Due to time  constraint that’s all I could do this year but next year I am going to be super organised and plan ahead. If you would like to surprise someone with some homemade edible gifts try these rocky roads, they are so easy to make and tatses yumm too :) 

Here goes the recipe ..

 (Recipe adapted from Nigella )

Ingredients( makes 24 bars)

Rich tea biscuits – 200 gm

Marshmallows – 100 gm

Dark chocolate (70 % cocoa) – 300 gm

Butter ( unsalted) – 125 gm

Golden syrup – 3 tbs

Cashewnut chopped -2 tbs

Raisins – 2 tbs

Icing sugar (for dusting)

Method

• Place the biscuits in a plastic bag and bash them with a rolling pin taking care to leave enough biscuit pieces to bite too.
• Melt butter, chocolate and golden syrup in a saucepan.
• Measure and save ½ cup or 125 ml of the melted mixture for later.
• Add marshmallows to the saucepan and mix.
• Add in the biscuit crumbs and pieces together with cashewnuts and raisins and fold in.
• Transfer it into a 9 inch square foil tray and spread it evenly as possible.
• Pour the reserved melted chocolate on top and smoothen it.
• Refrigerate for few hours or overnight.
• Dust it with icing sugar and cut them into pieces.