Of chocolate cravings, roller coasters and nostalgia

Once upon a time, long, long ago, very long ago, I was a little girl who used to go to school. In the long, hot months of the summer vacations, there used to nothing much to do except watch TV and play silly games with friends from your apartment complex. This was the time when cable television was still, largely, an unheard-of concept, and we used to be happy watching what the nation, largely, watched – Doordarshan. Only DD1, not even DD2. There was no Star TV, no Colours, no Zee, NatGeo or Discovery, but there was Duck Tales, Jungle Book, Potli Baba, Reporter and Byomkesh Bakshi. And vacation-special programmes for kids in the afternoons.

One of the sections of these vacation-special programmes used to be cooking, featuring recipes that kids could whip up easily in their home kitchens, without causing their parents too much distress. On one such summer afternoon, one such programme featured a recipe called ‘Roller Coasters’, easy-peasy chocolate-biscuit-coconut powder pinwheels that promised to taste as delicious as they were easy to make.

I took it into my head to try out this delicacy immediately. My Amma, being my Amma, took it into her head to ‘help’ me make them. Cocoa powder and unsalted butter and dry coconut – which the recipe called for – were not things we stocked in our kitchen readily those days, so we spent an evening assembling them. We toiled for about 15 minutes getting the pinwheels together, and then came a long wait of 2 hours while they cooled off in the refrigerator. Taking my first bite of one of these lovelies and feeling the tastes of coconut and cocoa mix in my mouth is one of my earliest foodie memories. This was the first ‘dish’ I had ‘cooked’ on my own, after all, albeit with ‘help’ from Amma. 🙂

These roller coasters got prepared in our house, and promptly devoured, a couple more times after this first time. Then, they were forgotten. Lost somewhere under the myriad dishes, cuisines and flavours entering my life over time. The memories of them remained buried somewhere in my still-little brain till recently, until a severe craving for something chocolate-ey forced them out. A severe craving for something chocolate-ey, the lack of availability of something chocolate-ey to eat instantly, some butter and cocoa powder and Marie biscuits and dry coconut lying unused since ages, that is.

The OH was equally excited by the prospect of some no-bake chocolate-coconut goodies, and we promptly looked up the recipe on the internet. This recipe confirmed that my memory had served me right, and I remembered the proceedure I had adopted all those years ago to make these pinwheels.

The proceedure was followed again yesterday and 12 beautiful chocolate-coconut pinwheels came into being, this time not without much ‘help’. They were much loved, and promises were made of them being a regular occurrence in the house henceforth. Yes, ‘were‘.

Presenting to you, ladies and gentlemen, ROLLER COASTERS. ‘Roller coasters’ shall always be the way I think of these. 🙂

Do you remember these from your childhood, too?

If you haven’t ever tasted these, I recommend you do soon. They’re worth much more than the 15-odd minutes you will spend on making them. 🙂