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Smarties Rocky Road

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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

Comments

  1. Cupcakes look lovely! I went thru a phase of wearing Kickers, had them in red, purple, brown etc and form my 21st birthday I was presented with a cake in the shape of Kickers – fantastic !!!

  3. The cake I remember the most was for my 11th birthday. It was an attempt to recreate a Sinclair ZX90 computer our of cake and icing. The shape was about right – but the icing was a very yellow buttercream (made with margarine) – which would have been ok but the computer itself was supposed to be white. The keyboard instead of being blue and black was made up of chocolate buttons with white glace icing letters piped on them. But there wasn’t space for the full alphabet!

    It was a good attempt – but would probably feature on Cake Wrecks these days.

    My 13th birthday cake was a hunk of baguette with thirteen candles stuck into it…. (we were on holiday in France at the time – and the heat caused the candles to droop!)

  4. I remember for my fifth birthday my mum made me a train birthday cake out of a huge swiss roll, smarties for the rivets and biscuits for the wheels! I loved it and still remember it really vividly now!

  10. Wow!! You are good at thinking and baking under pressure missy! I think I’d have run out to Sainsbury’s and bought bulk quantities of their cookies/mini mffins/tiffin and tried to pass them off as mine!

    A novelty birthday cake that made an impression on me – well,most of my childhood birthday cakes which my mum made. My favourites were a barbie cake and a park scene cake with little LEGO men, and grated coconut grass dyed green.

    • I don’t think I even had time for that if I’d wanted to! I like the sound of your lego cake with green coconut grass.

  14. My favourite novelty cake was Nigella’s Christmas Rocky Road (from the christmas book) adorned with a snow-scene – icing sugar snow, plastic reindeer and fir-trees. Christmastastic!

    I will be making your smartie rocky road for our last day in the office at work. What a treat for everyone!

  16. MM Rocky Road, I love all novelty cakes as they look fab, sometimes too good to eat, but we do, what joy to have made a fab cake and see peoples faces when they see it

  17. At school the cookery class used to do christmas cakes near the end of term and one of my friends covered hers in marzipan, and sculpted an igloo and iceberg with lots of little iceberg penguins! It was an amazing fantasy cake 🙂

  19. The cake that made the biggest impression on me was a Super Mario Cake in a Debbie Brown book. My son adored Super MArio and no where else sold a cake like it so I had to roll up my sleeves and attempt to make it – I am now raring to go on my next cake.

  20. I love the one my mum made my brother for his 5th birthday – a sponge treasure chest overflowing with gold chocolate coins, sweetie necklaces etc

  23. The birthday cake I most remember was from when I was around 8 years old. It was of a castle and was made totally from chocolate – chocolate cake, chocolate buttons, chocolate fingers etc. I can remember thinking it was the best thing I had ever seen 🙂

  26. The only time I had a proper baked Birthday cake was for my 13th birthday, which I had to spend in hospital as I was having a very serious back operation. Not a great place to spend your birthday but boy did I get some great presents including a lovely cake!

  29. My family made me a cake roughly resembling an owl as I am Brown Owl with the local Brownie Unit – I was most impressed especially as none of them have an artistic streak in their body

  30. My mum made a cake once that was supposed to be my face… well, it was round, had blond hair and blue eyes – I still knew it was me…

  31. My sister made me a tree stump cake with all these animal characters having a picnic on top and it was amazing!.It was so detailed and had all the little cups,plates,cakes,drinks,a picnic basket,and accessories.I loved it and the animals were so cute.

  33. I remember for my 16th birthday getting a rally car cake. It was brilliant and so apt as I was doing my first ever rally navigation that weekend! 11 years on I still have the number plate from that cake!

  36. I once made a Garfield cake with Garfield painted on. Spent hours on it and the interest lasted about 5 seconds before they cut into the cake to eat!

  40. I love making novelty cakes. I made a Thunderbirds Tracy Island cake for my children when they were small, complete with palm trees, lake, etc and a model Thunderbird 2 on the runway. It took a couple of days but was so worth it when they saw their cake!

  44. a friend made a ballerina cake for my daughter one year. The perimeter of the cake was the frilly tutu. my daughter loved it.

  52. I actually puT yhese on “my letter to Santa”,but just to make sure may I enter here as well?I’m sure Santa won’t mind!Thanks.

  53. My mother always made rich chocolate cakes for our birthdays and she made the same for our weddings.

  56. Somebody actually bought me a errr male inspired cake tin, it was very well endowed! Been too embarrassed to use it..lol

  58. I made a birthday cake for my son’s 8th birthday in 1977 with a huge Union flag on it as it was the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and everyone remembers it to this day!

  59. Oh stop it stop it! You are showing us too many delicious things. Stop stop stop.

    My neighbour made the cutest dragon cake last year and the year before a YODA cake. Now that is cool, surely?!

    Tweeted and follow.

    Maggy

  60. my friend makes fab cakes with her daughters last one being animal based with animals on top and all around the icing was done like animal skin was amazing

  61. A friend made a great caterpillar cake the other week and when she explained how to do it, it seemed really simple.

  68. my mum made me a cake in the shape of a cooker, I always remember the little frying pan on the top with some fried egg sweeties in it!!

  69. A superb Princess Castle birthday cake for one of my daughter’s friends! A delicious masterpiece!

  72. A dragon cake, made by my Mother in law for my sons 6th birthday. He wouldn’t let anyone eat it as he wanted to keep it. We compromised and kept the head

  73. My Great Grandma used to make what seemed to me hundreds of Christmas cakes every year, they were gorgeous and massive, they lasted well into the new year.

  75. My daughter’s Chocolate Truffle Cake shaped and decorated to make a gorgeous Pink Handbag Birthday Cake was wonderfully impressive!

  82. My 50th birthday cake from my children ha aphoto of me on it, it did make an impression on me but not a good one it was a sneaky photo my hubby took of me sat on the loo

  84. I used to make my children a dinosaur birthday cake that always used to get a good reception. I used to make 2 cakes and then cut them up to make the dinosaur and cover it in coloured butter icing. I used jelly diamonds for spinea along the back, chocolate buutons, jelly tots, smarties, anything went to decorate it with. It was so simple to do and I didn’t have to worry about smooth icing.

  87. I always had barbie cakes as a child! My mum has made dog cakes, cat cakes, castle cakes you name ’em in the past twenty years! I also liked you on facebook.

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