Rocky Road ice cream is one of my favorites so when I saw this on Instagram I immediately added it to my baking list. I knew this would be a stretch because it involved a few things I’ve either never tried, or haven’t done very often.

The actual baking of this cake was easy. Be sure to have everything at room temperature because it helps keep the cake from being flat. While I’m sure you could use normal cocoa the black cocoa gives it a really nice rich color which is fun.

While the cakes were baking I went ahead and made the marshmallow buttercream frosting. Spoiler alert: this is delicious! I’m not sure if I used too much frosting when I started icing the cake or what, but I ended up having to make a little more to create the rocky road ice cream scoops.

I made sure the cakes were fully cool before icing, but that was one of my favorite parts! It’s not often that I get to sprinkle walnuts and marshmallows on the inside of a cake. I put the initial outer icing on the cake and made sure to pop it in the fridge so it would set. Once it was done I put the second layer on as well and probably should have made it a little thicker. If you look at my photo you can almost see through to the chocolate layers of the cake and you don’t see that with the actual recipe photo so I’ll have to work on this area. I’ve also only used a bench scraper to try and get a super smooth cake twice before and still haven’t quite perfected it. This is still a work in progress but at least I’m getting a little better each time. I gently pressed some of the chopped walnuts onto the base of the cake and it wasn’t as difficult as I thought. I had tried this once before with sprinkles and wasn’t thrilled with the result but this was easier. Maybe second time is the charm?

The chocolate ganache drip wasn’t hard to make but in hindsight I actually think somehow I messed up the measurements because mine was too runny. I didn’t realize this until after I had used almost all of it so it was too late by then. It was still usable but I think it’ll be easier next time since it needed to be just a little thicker. This was another component of the cake I was worried about as I’ve never done a drip cake before.

The rocky road ice cream scoops were easy to throw together as well and again, tasted amazing. I was worried about these melting on the cake so I actually left it in the freezer until a few hours before serving. The downside of this was they weren’t as easy to cut through; however, they still tasted great.

I ranked this as an 8 for baking 8 and am including the decorating as part of that process; hence the slightly lower rating. Again, fairly time consuming but very worth it! I had low expectations for how it would turn out visually since there was a lot here I’d really never done before and was pleasantly surprised at how it turned out! Though please be sure to look at the photo on the actual recipe because it’s gorgeous! Taste-wise, this was incredible. Super, super rich but great for a crowd.

Baking Ease	8
Time Spent	8
Taste	10
Visual	10

Recipe Used: Chelsweets