Rocky Road Chocolate Cake

If you were considering moving from another country to work in London and you were meeting your potential colleagues for the first time, would this make you want to stay?

Team lunch. Nutritious.

No pressure on my baking or anything – just an attempt to bribe someone into living in the UK

In a food-based team-building effort, Mr B enforced a team lunch this week to welcome an international visitor.  He asked if I’d be his accomplice by making a cake to sweeten the deal (I’m here all night…). I thought that chocolate was a safe bet, so as I flicked through my stash of BBC Good Food magazines and came across this recipe, I felt I need look no further. It is essentially brownie topped with rocky road. I know it’s not quintessentially British but it’s easy and pretty indestructible when set. This makes it ideal for chucking in a rucksack for the cycle to work.

I only discovered this last fact after I had made the cake –  It hadn’t set for a few hours after making it so I stroppily dumped it in the fridge and went to bed thinking that at least it would be a tasty mess. I *may* have got up at 7am the next morning to check on it and bounded back upstairs to a bleary eyed husband to proclaim that ‘it’s ok, the cake has set’. I’ll let you chose your adjective for that behavior.

I think that the base of this is a brownie – the recipe says it’s a cake. Call it whatever will make someone stay in your country of residence.

Packed and ready to go

Rocky Road Chocolate (Brownie) Cake
 This recipe is not mine, it’s from the BBC Good Food calendar 2012 but I can’t find it anywhere else so that’s why I’m reproducing it.

For the cake/brownie
175g butter
200g light soft brown sugar [I used 150g dark muscavado and 50g caster sugar and it was fine – made it a bit more fudgey]
2 large eggs
140g self-raising flour
50g cocoa powder

For the topping
100g butter
300g dark chocolate [I used a mixture of dark, milk and raw chocolate as I was using up my cupboard stash]
3tbsp golden syrup
12 marshmallows, halved [I used 90g of mini marshmallows – found in the baking aisle]
85g Maltesers [I didn’t weigh mine – just chucked a load in, and then added some more for good measure!]
85g raisins [I left these out as Mr B isn’t keen]
50g walnut halves [I left these out in case of nut allergies]

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4
Grease and line a 20cm square tin which is deep enough to take the cake AND topping (mine spilled over the edges and had to be …er…tidied up)
Melt the butter and leave to cool in a large bowl.
Stir in the sugar, eggs, flour and cocoa. Beat well.
Pour into the tin and bake for around 35mins or until a skewer come out clean

For the topping (while the cake is cooling)
Melt the butter, chocolate and syrup together, leave to cool for 15mins.
Stir in everything else (make sure the chocolate mix is cooled or the marshmallows will melt.
Spoon over the top of the cake and put in the fridge. It’ll need quite a while to set properly.
Cut into squares and demolish.

This is my entry into into Chocolate Log Blog – We Should Cocoa’s third birthday chocolate showstoppers challenge as this will stop you in your tracks by sheer amount of chocolate. you won’t be able to move afterwards.

It is also my entry to Teatime Treats which is hosted by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked and is all about tray bakes this month, s I doubled the recipe and made a giant tray bake with it.