Rocky Road

A simple recipe for Rocky Road:

Ingredients

• 1 bag (12 oz) milk chocolate chips
• 2 cups miniature marshmallows
• 1 cup crushed walnuts

Line an 8" square baking pan with aluminum foil. Lightly grease the foil (for this, I have found Pam cooking spray to work excellently).

Pour the chocolate chips into a microwaveable container (should be large enough to fit at least 4 cups of material). Bake on High power for thirty seconds. Stir the chips. Repeat this process until all of the chocolate chips are melted.

Stir the marshmallows and nuts into the melted chocolate. Make sure that all of the marshmallows are coated in chocolate. Once you have finished mixing it, spoon the mixture into the baking pan. Make sure to spread it evenly throughout the whole pan.

Place the pan in the refrigerator and let cool for about 4 hours. Remove the pan from the refrigerator and remove the foil from the pan. Carefully separate the foil from the rocky road. Using a large knife, cut the rocky road into small pieces. If you do not plan to serve it immediately, it is probably best to keep it refrigerated.

One of the most delicious substances I have ever consumed, rocky road makes an excellent snack, dessert, or meal. Made with just the right combination of chocolate ice cream, miniature marshmallows, and chopped walnuts, everything from its taste to its texture is absolutely perfect. Best served straight from the freezer (or even better, straight from the ziploc bag in which you made it yourself), rocky road has been a staple of the ice-cream eater's diet for just about forever¹.

The only real flaw with rocky road is that it doesn't work as a conventional ice cream should, and substituting it in recipes where a more normal ice cream is expected can lead to disaster. Rocky road with apple pie a la mode makes for an extremely odd combination of flavors, and a rocky road root beer float is practically the definition of failure (how're you going to get those marshmallows up that straw? Not to mention the chocolate floating in your soda...).

On the other hand, however, when combined with other chocolate-based foods, rocky road increases the awesomeness potential of a given dish tremendously. Imagine the triple threat chocolate attack of a scoop of the good stuff on a bar of expensive dark chocolate (seventy percent cocoa, no less) with chocolate syrup drizzled on top-- truly an epicurean pleasure.