Rocky Road Crunch Bars Nigella Lawson Food

BREAKFAST BARS 2.0

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F)/gas mark 4 or, and line the bottom and sides of your tin with baking parchment. Pit the dates and tear them with your fingers into a small saucepan, add the cinnamon, cover with the water, bring to the boil and let bubble for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, and beat with a fork until you have a rough puree.
• Put all the remaining ingredients into a large bowl, add the date mixture and mix until everything is combined. I wear a pair of disposable vinyl gloves for this.
• Squodge into your prepared tin and bake in the oven for 30 minutes, until firm and set, and golden on top and darker around the edges. Leave to cool in the tin before cutting into pieces.

ROCKY ROAD CRUNCH BARS - NIGELLA LAWSON

Steps:

• Melt chocolate, butter and golden syrup together over low heat.
• Put digestive biscuits in a ziptop bag. Bash with a rolling pin until you have a mixture of coarse and fine crumbs.
• Remove 1/2 cup of the melted chocolate mixture and set aside. Add biscuit crumbs and marshmallows to the chocolate remaining in the pan. Mix thoroughly. Turn out into a 9" square pan. Pat out flat. Drizzle reserved chocolate over the top.
• Refrigerate several hours or overnight. Dust top with powdered sugar and cut into 24 bars.

SWEET AND SALTY CRUNCHY NUT BARS

Steps:

• Be still my beating heart! Or perhaps this is not the best thing to say here, given the likelihood of this lusciously over-the-top piece of chocolate excess inducing just such an outcome. I wouldn't want to make this very often, so impossible is it to walk away from with any conviction. I fear it is the kitchen equivalent to crack cocaine.
• Still, as the French say "Everything in moderation, even moderation." This is gloriously intemperate, riotously vulgar. I love it.
• The key is the blaring balance between sweet and salty: it's like several klaxons going off in your head as you eat. And it's strange that while I would normally eschew an all-milk chocolate offering, I prefer it here to the bittersweet-and-milk mixed version. Not that either is bad, and since the jury is matched on this, I feel it only right to alert you to either option. For what it's worth, I like the darker version in the round pan and cut into panforte-type skinny wedges, and my preferred milk chocolate version set in a rectangular pan and cut into chunky, squat slabs (rather as I feel and look like after eating too many of them).
• Line your springform pan with aluminum foil or use a foil pan.
• Break up or chop the chocolate into pieces, and drop into a heavy-based saucepan. Add the butter and syrup, put on a low heat, and melt gently together.
• Tip the peanuts into a bowl, and crush the honeycomb candy with your hands, letting the golden-glinting rubble fall into the nuts.
• Take the melted chocolate mixture off the heat and stir in the peanuts and crushed honeycomb candy, then tip straight into the springform pan or foil pan. Smooth the top of the mixture as much as you can, pressing down with a silicon spatula or vinyl-disposable-gloved hand. Put into the refrigerator for about 4 hours, and once set, cut into slices as desired.
• Make Ahead Note: The bars can be made 1 day ahead. Transfer slices to airtight container, layered with parchment paper, and store in refrigerator. Keeps for 3 to 4 days.

CHRISTMAS ROCKY ROAD - NIGELLA LAWSON

Steps:

• Place the dark and milk chocolate pieces into a heavy-based pan. Add the butter and golden syrup and cook over a low heat to melt and combine.
• Place the amaretti biscuits into a freezer bag and bash with a rolling pin to make crumbs of various sizes.
• Place the Brazil nuts into another freezer bag and bash in the same way.
• Take the pan of melted chocolate mixture off the heat and add the crushed biscuits and nuts.
• Add the glacé cherries and mini marshmallows. Fold the mixture carefully to coat all of the solid ingredients with the syrupy chocolate mixture.
• Pour the mixture into a 25cm/10in x 30cm/12in greased and lined baking tray (Swiss roll pan) and smooth the surface as much as possible (although it will look bumpy).
• Refrigerate for two hours, or until firm enough to cut. Dust with icing sugar, then sprinkle with edible glitter if you wish.
• Remove the block of rocky road from the tray and cut into 24 rectangles.