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.

Northamptonshire Seed Cake: English Teatime Cakes

My Good Friend Mr. McNair got me a few new cookbooks for my birthday. Two of these were cute little English cookbooks, one called: Traditional Puddings the other is English Teatime Recipes (Traditonal Cakes from around the Shires)

They're both done with the cutest little water color paintings on each page & recipes with names like: Kentish Cob-nut Cake, Yorkshire Sticky Parkins. I was so tickled with these downright homey sounding little treats. So I finally got around to making one the other day. It's so easy you gotta try it. The combination of caraway seeds & freshly ground nutmeg was just too good. Here's the recipe if you wanna try it. It says:

"A plain cake flavored with nutmeg & caraway seeds, traditionally served at sheep shearing time."

Northamptonshire Seed Cake:

- 8 oz butter (it's 230 g. of butter but one 200g block is fine. 1 cup)
- 8 oz sugar (about 1 cup, but it's waaaay to much so I cut it down to 1/2 a cup)
- 4 eggs
- 8 oz flour (230 g. flour, or 2 cups of flour)
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp ground nutmeg
- 2 tsp caraway seeds

Set oven to 350F (180c) Grease a 8 inch round cake tin. Cream butter & sugar & butter in a bowl till light & fluffy. Place eggs in a bowl & set over a saucepan of hot water & whisk until fluffy, whisk into the butter mixture. Sift the flour, b. powder together & nutmeg & fold into the egg/butter mixture. Add caraway seeds & combine well. Turn into the prepared tin & smooth over the top. Bake for 1 1/2 hr covering the top with a piece of kitchen foil if it appears to be browning too quickly. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack.