Rocky road - Cycling food

I had to get back to Uni for lectures on monday, and as it's me I cycle there! Not that theres any alternative without a car.
Anyway I decided to make something to fuel my trip and after a lot of my usual indecision settled on Rocky road cake.
Rocky road cake isn't really a cake at all but, is simply a mixture of chocolate, marshmallows, fruit and nuts.
The ingredients can vary according to taste but chocolate and marshmallows are both essential.
My version had raisins, chopped hazlenuts and walnuts which I toasted in a dry frying pan, (peanuts are more traditional but I had none) glace cherries and obviously chocolate and marshmallows.
As the chocolate is the base for this it is essential that you use a good quality chocolate, dark milk or even white could be used although white chocolate would be very sweet. I'm a dark chcolate person so I used Cote d'or.

Rocky Road
(I havn't given quantities, I just mixed in what looked right)

• Chocolate
• Nuts of your choice
• Marshmallows (the small ones or just cut sume up with scissors)
• Dried fruit such as raisins and sultanas
• Glace cherries

This is so easy to make simply melt your chocolate and mix everything together, put the mixture into a tin lined with baking parchment and leave to set. Easy!

Chocolate and cherry scones

I've felt like making (and eating) scones for a while now, and by coincidence there was a really interesting recipe in a new book I have just bought. "The great book of chocolate" by David Lebovitz, the book is brilliant, I have found it really interesting as it contains far more than just a regular cookbook, although there are planty of great recipes, in fact more than half is about chocolate, from it's history to how it's made and even health benefits.
There are 30 recipes in the back and these scones are one of them.
I have had cherry scones before but never with chocolate in which I thought was a really good idea, the recipe also calls for orange zest which I didn't have so I used orange oil instead. (I recomend buying some citrus oils to keep in the cupboard for when you have no oranges or lemons in the house, they're just as good in my opinion).

The recipe is very easy to follow although this book is american and I did have to find out what cake flour was, apparently a good substitute can be made by mixing 7 parts plain to 1 part cornflour, this seemed to work well as my scones were the perfect texture, light, crumbly and buttery. The orange flavour comes through well, it is subtle but adds an extra and delicious dimension to the scones.
Overall these were a great success and I will definately make them again, judging by the speed they disappeared I'm guessing everyone liked them as much as I did!
I won't post the recipe here because I haven't changed it at all, but I'm sure you could work it out with a basic scone recipe, or even better buy the book!!

David lebovitz has an excellent food blog, probably the best on the internet which can be found here