Everyone has a favorite ice cream flavor. As a kid, mine was rocky road. I have very vivid childhood memories of standing in front of the counter at Buster’s in South Pasadena, reaching for a rocky road-topped sugar cone. What’s not to love about chocolate ice cream studded with walnuts and tender little marshmallows? The marshmallows were my favorite part. Something about coming across one mid-lick and slurping it out of the melting ice cream made savoring a rocky road cone blissful. Nothing was better than ice cream at Buster’s followed by a romp on the railroad tracks next door. My brother and I left countless pennies to be squished by the trains and retrieved on our next family trip for ice cream.
Sorry, I guess I’m feeling sentimental. The point is, I came across a recipe for rocky road cookies online and felt a hankering to recreate my favorite flavor combo in a cookie! The recipe I found didn’t quite translate to the rocky road I remembered. The cookies weren’t chocolate and the nuts were peanuts. I fixed the recipe up easily, though, and made a little dent in the half bag of mini marshmallows leftover from Lee’s birthday cake. I ended up with a cake-like chocolate cookie generously filled with carob chips, walnuts, and marshmallows. The marshmallows melt and toast in the oven making for some very sticky, gooey cookies. Oh, and if you use vegan marshmallows like these, my rocky road cookies are vegan!
Rocky Road Cookies
Adapted from this recipe on VegWeb.com
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup natural turbinado sugar
2 tablespoons coconut oil (or your preferred oil/butter)
3 tablespoons applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon ground flax mixed with 3 tbsp water
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup chocolate or carob chips
mini marshmallows
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
Combine flax mixture, applesauce, coconut oil, vanilla, and sugar. Mix until smooth.
Add dry ingredients to wet, mixing as you do until a dough forms.
Fold in walnuts and chocolate chips.
Place a couple marshmallows in a tablespoon, scoop up a spoonful of cookie dough, and place the ball on an oiled cookie sheet. This way the marshmallows end up on top of the cookie, don’t stick to the cookie sheet, and get all toasty! You could, of course, just mix a couple handfuls of marshmallows right into the dough.
I got all the cookies on one sheet. They don’t spread out so it you want them to be flatter, press down on the top of each cookie a bit with the back of a spoon.
Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes.
If these cookies weren’t gone, I’d try crumbling a few into some chocolate ice cream for a real rocky road experience!
