Sometimes in life, only chocolate will do. Combine that with baking and you’ve got a winner. Two recipes I’ve had recent success with (i.e. the results were scoffed within a couple of days by me and mine) are Chocolate and Cream Cheese Brownies (think the perfect fusion between a brownie and cheesecake), and Rocky Roads, which frankly need no explaination and barely require a “recipe” as such but I wanted to share my (current) fave version…

Rocky Roads.

These are perfect to make if you have limited patience with “proper baking”, as they take about half an hour then a bit of fridge time (although never tell the people you serve them to how easy these bad boys actually are – far better to allow them to think you are a domestic goddess for as long as possible). They are also pretty cheap to make, I got about 14 generous servings for about £5-6, which makes you wonder how certain coffee shop chains can charge so much for it!

Warning - Not Suitable for Diabetics...

As I mentioned there’s no real recipe for this – its more a case of finding the right combo of “rocky” bits that suit you.

• Melt about 300g of chocolate with half a block of butter (this is not a diet recipe I’m afraid), and a good couple of tablespoons of golden syrup or honey over a pan of boiling water. As for what chocolate you use, thats entirely down to personal choice – You can use dark, milk, plain or a combination and you can pay out for the posh “Green and Blacks” style stuff of go for the budget version. Make sure its chocolate you would buy to eat though – not that awful fake “cake covering stuff. You can actually also add in a bit of peanut butter if youn want at this stage, but thats entirely dependant on personal choice and the contents of your cupboards. And your concience. Luckily for me I don’t believe diets work, and take more of a “90% of the time I’m good, so the rest of the time I can have a treat” approach to life so I added a good dollop…
• Thats the tarmac or Road bit sorted… now for the rocks. Personally I think broken biscuits and marshmallows are a must. I dont usually eat digestives, so I just picked up a “value” pack and broke up around half the pack into bite size bits. For marshmallows I discovered mini marshmallows in the home baking section at my local Tesco’s so I’d assume they’s be fairly easy to get everywhere, although you could use big marshmallows of course if you wanted… You could also add some marashino cherries, or raisins should you like, but I decided not to because I don’t like dried fruit, and I had none in the house. Instead I decided to go further down the nut route, and added some smashed up honey roasted cashews to the mix.
• Other stuff you could add; little bits of turkish delight, more unusual dried fruit such as banana chips or dates, different types of biscuits such as choc chip cookies, dessicated coconut, peanuts, toasted oats etc… just go with what you love!
• Mix the rubble and the chocolate together – try to make sure all the rubble has a reasonable coating of chocolate. Line a deep tray with some clingfilm, and pour the mix in, pressing into the corners of the tray and then wrap over with the clingfilm.
• Refrigerate for about 4-5 hours, and if you have any, dredge it over with some icing sugar through a sieve, slice and devour.

Cream Cheese and Chocolate Brownies

These are something I’d choose to make on a day off where you have plenty of time to lick the used bowls do the clearing up. Time consuming and somewhat labour intensive but definitely worth it. The original recipe was from Nigella Lawson’s “How to be a Domestic Goddess”, but after making it a few times I’ve noted a few things that I’ve altered. Check out Nigella’s site HERE for more recipes by her…

• 125g dark chocolate
• 125g unsalted butter (although personally I dont feel it makes any difference if the butter is lightly salted – I’ve tried both, both were fine)
• 2 large eggs.
• 200g caster sugar
• 1teaspoon vanilla essence (NOT extract, which tastes very synthetic, must be essence which is a sweet thick syrupy substance, only a little is needed and it will last for ever)
• 75g plain flour
• Pinch of salt
• 200g cold soft cheese such as Philadelphia (I used the supermarket own version – absolutely no difference in taste)
• 20cm square tin (or similar sized)

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180c

Melt that chocolate and butter over a saucepan or hot water.

In a separate (small) bowl beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract together. Then in a larger mixing bowl sift together the flour and salt.

Take the chocolate off the heat when all melted and allow to cool slightly before beating in the egg mixture (allow it to cool or you’ll end up with a chocolate flavoured scrambled eggs mixture…), then add the flour and fold together until smooth.

Line and grease the tin you are using, and then pour half of the mixture in. Then top this with either thin slices or small blobs of the cream cheese (recipe demands thin slices, but for some reason I couldn’t do this without a cream cheese disaster being threatened so I settled for small blobs with the aid of two teaspoons), then top with the rest of the brownie mixture.

Bake in the middle shelf for 20 minutes, although I found this needed longer – around 30 minutes. When cooked the top will be slightly pale and dry, but the cake itself will still be slightly dense and fudgy in the centre, but not sloppy or runny…

Allow to cool, turn out and cut into squares. Prepare to be adored.