Eating Gluten Free on the Go, Part 2: Starbucks (Plus GF Rocky Road)

I don't' go in Starbucks for food anymore, I used to love a hot chocolate and a piece of Rocky Road but that's off the menu now as rocky road has big lumps of biscuit in it. For GF eating, Starbucks is a bit rubbish. It's mostly cakes, pastries, paninis, sandwiches and muffins. They do a couple of salads, ingredients on the tubs, and a couple of fruit salads too but these are often sold out by lunchtime. I wasn't impressed when I had a mozzarella salad, as the salad leaves were all sandy! yack!

So, for a GF eater, a drink here is ok (assuming my hot chocolate is GF and has no silly fillers!), eating here is a dead loss. Also, it smells of nice cakes and things and really makes me crave Rocky Road.

So, on that note, here is my own GF Rocky Road recipe! This is often called chocolate freezer/fridge cake too, as there is no baking involved. A great cake for kids to make, supervise the chocolate melting as this involves hot water, no eggs or anything involved so they can go crazy licking out the dishes.

• dark chocolate 150 g bar, go for Green & Blacks
• golden syrup 3 tbsp
• salted butter 100g
• marshmallows 1 packet pink and white, chopped in half
• raisins 50g
• rice crispies 1 cup (not kellogs - its has barley extract in it - a lot of supermarket own brands are ok)

Line a small square tin with clingfilm. Melt the chocolate, butter and golden syrup in a bowl over hot water, don't let the bowl touch the water. Add the marshmallows, crispies and raisins to the wet mixture. You can also add glace cherries, any dried fruit and any nuts too, but I keep things simple so the husband will eat these too. If adding more dry things, make a bit more of the wet mixture to balance things out, if you find your mixture is very runny add more crispies. Squish the warm mixture into your tin and bung in the fridge for a couple of hours, lick the mixing bowl while you wait. When its set pull it out of the tin and peel off the cling film, dust the bumpy (rocky!) top with icing sugar and cut into bars. You can make this in a round cake tin if you like, or a muffin tin, anything really. Keep in the fridge, at room temperature this melts slowly to a sticky mess.

Now make yourself a nice Green & Blacks hot chocolate, using steamed milk from the coffee machine, and munch on a nice slice of Rocky Road. Much nicer than Starbucks any day, and no one eating muffins and pastries next to you.

If when you are melting chocolate, with butter and things, your chocolate goes all stiff and grainy looking, this means it has 'seized'. To return it to its normal state add just a little boiling water straight from the kettle and whisk well, it should go runny again. Mixing chocolate with butter and cream makes a lovely chocolate sauce, but adding the cream cold is likely to make the chocolate seize, so warm it first. If it seizes, rescue in the same way. A block of chocolate, tub of cream, nob of butter and a splash of brandy makes a lovely chocolate fondue for dipping strawberries in. In fact, I make quite a few recipes that involve emulsifying chocolate with things like cream, eggs and butter, like my little chocolate orange pots that I will tell you how to make later.