These are the rock cakes you have been looking for - I've bent the rules a bit and heaped them full of fruit and chocolate - you won't believe how good they taste.
The Recipe
Ingredients:
- 250g Self-Raising Flour
- 125g Butter or margarine
- 50g Granulated or caster sugar
- 250g Chocolate and/or yoghurt-coated raisins
- 1 Egg
- Milk to mix - a tablespoonful or two
Method:
Preheat the oven to 190C.
Sift the flour into a large bowl.
Rub in the fat, either by rubbing it together with your fingertips, or by repeatedly cutting through it with a table knife, or by means of a rubbing-in tool like the one in this picture.
Stop when the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Add the sugar.
Add the fruit and mix it in - I'm using equal amounts of (left to right in this picture):
Yoghurt and cranberry-crumb coated dried cranberries
Blueberry yoghurt coated raisins
Chocolate coated raisins
(Totalling 250g all together)
Add the egg and one tablespoon of milk - mix it in with a table knife, aiming to make a stiff dough.
Add more milk in very small amounts if it won't come together.
Don't knead the dough at all - and work it only as much as necessary to pick up any dry crumbs in the bowl.
Tear of chunks of dough and place them on a greased (or nonstick lined) cookie sheet.
Again, don't knead or squash the cakes - just grab a chunk of dough and drop it - they'll lose their light and crumbly texture if worked too much.
Bake in the oven for 12 to 15 minutes, or until they just start to brown at the extremities.
Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool for at least another 10 minutes before serving (the fruit and chocolate inside can stay scalding hot for a while.)
This recipe makes about a dozen rock cakes - they're best consumed the same day (I don't think this will be a problem, when you taste them).
