Recipe

Easy milk chocolate rocky road with pretzels, peanuts and licorice

Thursday 11 DecemberThu 11 Dec 2025 at 5:47am

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 45 minutes

Skill level: Low

Serves: 12

This no-bake recipe can double as a homemade gift. (ABC News: Clementine Day)

Clementine Day is a cook and recipe developer based on Dja Dja Wurrung country, in Castlemaine Victoria.

She posts as @SomeThingsILikeToCook on Instagram and published her first cookbook, Coming Together, in 2020.

This rocky road is not only really good, it’s very easy to make.

You’ll be left with 12 decent slices, which can be wrapped in baking paper as gifts for friends and family or enjoyed as a festive dessert.

Rocky road can be very sweet with the combination of marshmallows and all manner of lollies that are coated in chocolate. In this recipe, I set out to rectify this and save you from a sugar crash.

It’s easy to customise this recipe and make it gluten-free if needed. (ABC News: Clementine Day)

I’ve combined milk chocolate and vanilla marshmallows with heavily salted roasted peanuts and pretzels to balance the sweetness. Licorice, while sweet, adds fennel, aniseed and slightly bitter notes that add a point of interest.

The licorice is not as overpowering as you may think, so I encourage you to give it a try if you’re on the fence about including it.

Be sure to use the right-sized tray to create thick rocky road logs. (ABC News: Clementine Day)

Tips:

• Make it your own: You can customise this recipe to include your favourite things. Most notably, if you’re not a fan of licorice, try adding some chopped halva or candied/crystallised ginger. The flavour will be different, but both will be a nice contrast to the sweet and salty ingredients and add a different texture too.
• **Gluten-free options: **To make this recipe gluten-free, you can swap the pretzels for some salty popcorn (the weight will not translate directly, I suggest using 40-50g popped popcorn). Search Coeliac Australia for products that are suitable for a gluten-free diet. Make sure that you buy gluten-free marshmallows.
• **It’s essential to use the right-sized dish and line it with baking paper: **Using a dish that’s too big will leave you with a flat, shallow rocky road and not lining it properly will make getting it out an awful challenge.
• Halving the recipe: It can be expensive to buy this much chocolate, so it’s important to note that you can also halve the recipe, but you will need to use a dish half the size.

This recipe makes 12 large rocky road logs for sharing or eating. (ABC News: Clementine Day)

Easy milk chocolate rocky road with pretzels, peanuts and licorice

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 45 minutes

Skill level: Low

Serves: 12

Ingredients

Method

1. Lightly grease and line a 20cm x 25cm rectangular dish with baking paper. Make sure it is well lined on the bottom and all four sides. It can help to have one long piece of baking paper that covers the bottom of the dish and overhangs the two longest sides, which will allow you to lift the rocky road out of the tray once set.
2. In a large glass jug or mixing bowl, add the chopped milk chocolate and coconut oil and melt gently in the microwave. I usually do 1 minute, remove it and mix, and then follow with 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between until it’s completely melted. I found that 2 minutes and 30 seconds in total was enough to melt this much chocolate in my microwave, but all microwaves are a little different.
3. In a separate, larger bowl, add the marshmallows, peanuts and licorice. Roughly break about half of the pretzels into pieces as you add them to the bowl as it helps to have a mix of whole and broken pretzels.
4. Pour the melted chocolate over the top of the fillings and using a spatula, carefully scrape out as much chocolate as you can from the bowl. Then, use this spatula to combine the chocolate through all of the ingredients as well as possible. Everything should look coated in chocolate and there should be even distribution of the fillings.
5. Pour this into your prepared dish. Use the spatula to try to evenly distribute the marshmallows and other fillings across your tray.
6. Refrigerate for 30-45 minutes until completely firm all the way through.
7. Once set, remove from fridge and use the baking paper to help you lift or manoeuvre the slab out of the dish and onto a chopping board. Use a sharp knife to divide the rocky road in half, and then each half into 3 long logs, creating a total of 6 logs. Then cut each log in half to make your 12 rocky road bricks.
8. Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place for 1-2 weeks or in the fridge for up to 4 weeks.