Sunday, January 31, 2010

Ol' Harry Rock Cakes: English Teatime Recipes



Made these cute little Rock Cakes/Scones today they're my idea of a perfect Teatime accompaniment. I've found myself with a new taste for candied orange rind so these little babies hit the spot. Here's the recipe as I used it. The actual recipe uses weight for the measurements which, if you have a kitchen scale, is great. I personally prefer it. But I just changed it all to cups. I've only changed a few things like a little wholewheat flour for texture, shortening along with the butter, & cut the sugar back by 1/2.

The little "explain" about the name says:

"These traditional roughly-formed "rock-like" buns are named after the isolated chalk stacks near Studland on the Dorset coast."

(recipe called for 2 c "self raising flour" so I just made up the difference with salt & leavening agents)
1 3/4 c all purpose & 1/4 c whole wheat
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt)

1/2 tsp mixed spice (I just sorta improvised using nutmeg/clove/ginger)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 c butter (the recipe measured it in weight which was 115g, so I had about 1/4 of that be shortening)
1/2 c light brown sugar (recipe called for demerara sugar/raw cane)
1/2 c mixed dried fruit (suggests: currents, sultanas, mixed peel, glace cherries etc..) I used candied orange peel & cranberries
grated rind of 1/2 lemon
1 medium egg
2 tbsp milk

Put flour, salt baking powder/soda, spices in bowl, rub butter into dry ingr till mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. Stir in sugar, mixewd dried friut & lemon rind. Add egg & milk & combine with dry to from a crumbly dough (don't worry it'll seem too dry at first) Form into 10-12 rough heaps (I love rustic cooking, it's makes us poor persons who have no time to cook seem incredibly cool) on GREASED baking tray. Bake for 20 min in 180c oven till lightly browned. Cool on baking tray for 5 minutes before moving to wire rack till cool. Best eaten on the day. But they also freeze well.

Well, friends if you've gotten this far then pray tell me. Whats new about this post?

If you've figured it out...you can thank my brah, Mas! He is the man & I am the proverbial NEWB!

Honest to God, if you come to my blog to harass me about photography or talk numbers & tactical photo-taking I shall stuff a scone in your mouth & tell you that I haven't time for such nonsense. Then of course secretly be on my itouch searching "what means ISO?" on google.

Wish me luck w/ my, as yet unnamed, sleek black baby & if you got any friendly advice just remember, if knew as much about cooking as I do about cameras I'd be blogging to you now about my exploits in scrambled egg making.

So, till you ring my doorbell for a free dinner hand out & lecture on my phototaking blunders-- hope you have a good one.

2 comments:

オテモヤン said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Unknown said...

Re: chickpeas

Someone was telling me you can dry the canned version out in the oven and then use them to make falafel s etc.

There are enough Iranians etc in Japan that there should be some ethnic shops somewhere. One would think.