Rocky Road Cookies

Apparently, there are different versions of the "Rocky Road" flavour. Therefore, I don't think it's wrong calling these leftover-Halloween-candy-pieces cookies "Rocky Road" cookies. They have oatmeal, marshmallows, peanut M&Ms, rock-shaped chocolate with realistic rock-like sugar coating (I used to pass by a chocolatier at Penrith Plaza when  I was younger, in Australia, and they used to have golden and silver beads/sprinkles/candy balls on display. I don't remember if they had rock-like coating chocolate, though), one peanut butter bunny from April, 3 malt balls, and milk chocolate chunks.

My sister and I made half a batch of cookies using a recipe from a brand-name sponsored recipe book. Why did I buy a recipe book full of food company advertising? ...This was 4 years ago (wow...that long?) and I was in NY and the Strand was having a sale (closing sale?) and I got a thick hardcover recipe book for $1 with pages after pages of shiny, colourful pictures of scrumptious desserts!! So, I did it for the pictures.

Come on, why else -apart from the images- do recipe books sell nowadays, with millions of equally fancy (or, even better...like the recipes I have, which have comments on better technique and economical energy usage?) recipes online?

Half the batch ended up providing us with 31 cookies. Yummy.

By the way, the Australian version of "Rocky Road" is evidently superior to the American version (in my opinion, drawn from experience). According to Wikipedia (I know, not a completely correct source), the American version is just marshmallow, nuts, and milk chocolate--that is true. The Australian definition, however, includes things such as COCONUT, TURKISH DELIGHT and jelly!--that is true also.

Amy Gutmann's Study Break

Holiday style!

There were cookies, nuts, chocolate, a chocolate fountain, and drinks, brought to us by Amy Gutmann's hired catering company [the same one as the one at Halloween?]. It was in her backyard, and it was indoors inside this huge tent, tinted blue.

Cliche holiday cookies, with nice normal milk chocolate.

Dry, airy sticky buns that tasted quite bland and cold. I did not like it.

Milk Chocolate!

The disgusting liquorice-ish cookies are the white ones... I'm not sure if it's liquorice or anise or something... but it was disgusting! I thought it was powdered sugar.

Coconut macaroons, caramel thins...chocolate cookies. Tuesday 14 December.

More Frey Chocolate

Rum milk chocolate; tasted a bit nutty and dessicated-coconutty. I've never had rum before so I don't know if there really was "rum" inside the chocolate.


Dark chocolate truffle... The ganache almost tasted sour, which was a bit bizarre.

More Lindt.

1. I like white chocolate. There's no cocoa in it, but I still like it, as a candy. It's sweet and creamy, even though I don't like either of those in milk chocolate, because milk chocolate just seems to be... vacillating between real chocolate [dark chocolate] and milk candy [white chocolate].
The Cresta was really smooth, which I like, and the centre had a special nutty filling, which was more gooey than the hard outer shell. I just ate a piece that had been in the freezer [I like chocolate from the freezer. It snaps nicely.], and yes, you can tell there is filling.
Note the shape.
NOTE THE SHAPE OF THE CHOCOLATE BELOW!
The one chocolate from the pile that was smooshed. I supposed it didn't fit in the mould correctly, or it didn't harden by the time it reached the packaging deptarment... or something.
Salvador Dali chocolate... anyone?
The funnest one to eat. Seriously. I enjoyed the change in shape. Anyway, the proper one is below:
This is a "correctly" shaped Lindt/Lindor.
It was really smooth, and appeared to be uniform and felt, to me, just like a typical milk chocolate chunk. However, I later ate one that had been sitting in 30 degrees C temperature, and the outer shell was pliable and I didn't even have to bite it, for it to disintegrate into pieces in my mouth. This time, I could tell there was a middle layer, that tasted kinda caramelly, but that totally could've been imagined.
Super milk!
Note the shape. This one has a DEEPER INDENT. WHY?! It was super smooth... why ruin it by REMOVING a slice of it!? It tasted just like the Lindor, except that it was creamier. Though, when I consumed both frozen, they tasted the same, both taste and texture-wise [sans the dent aspect, though].

These actually look appealing too. They're better than the misshapen truffles.

Lindor Fail Update!

Yesterday, I blogged about how Choco Amore manages to make spherical chocolate truffles, and is a relatively unknown company. Yet, Lindor, on the other hand, is a freakin' 5th Ave multi-million zillion $$ company, which produces truffles with dimples.

I was browsing through my Food folder and I noticed that in March I had eaten another Lindor truffle [we get random chocolate once in a while], and this time, not only was there a dimple, but there was also a... tumour!
You'd think that a company so profoundly famous and with such "good standing" and such "rich history" would've figured out how to make spherical truffles by now.