Cherries For Christmas Rocky Road | Ask Nigella.com (2024)

Our answer

Nigella's Christmas Rocky Road bars (from NIGELLA CHRISTMAS) are a seasonal variation on the chocolate, biscuit (cookie) and marshmallow Rocky Road Crunch Bars. Glace cherries are added for seasonal colour.

Glace (candied) cherries are cooked in a sugar syrup until they are almost completely preserved and are then dried so that they are just slightly stickly. Maraschino cherries are instead stored in sugar syrup, are not cooked for such a long time and tend to be softer in texture. The problem with using maraschino cherries in this recipe is that they are "wetter" than glace cherries and need to be stored in the fridge. So if you use them, blot them thoroughly on kitchen paper (paper towels) before using them and store the bars in the fridge for up to 5 days. Alternatively you could use dried cherries or even dried cranberries as an alternative or omit the cherries completely and replace them with extra nuts. For other recipes you would need to look on a recipe by recipe basis, so it is difficult to generalise.