Thursday, July 18, 2013

Rock Buns

It had seemed like only last week, but I have only just realised that it has been more than six months ago since I last made rock-buns!

I haven’t really got round to experimenting with the different recipes, but the recent recipe I tried out at 9pm on a Thursday evening when I had the sudden urge to bake so Spud could bring them to school to share with her friends on her last day of the term turned out to be quite decent.

With just a little bit of personal modification attached to the recipe, this batch of rock buns was crumbly, not too dry and not at all too sweet.  They were a little bit more colourful than the usual Rock Buns fare (thanks to Dutch fruit sprinklers) and Spud loves it to bits. She can’t get enough of those buns and they have turned out to be a good motivator to get her to finish her main meal.

I’m trying to entice her to bake again with me one of these days when I’m not feeling too lazy.

Meantime, enjoy these babies!

Ingredients:
  • 225g (8oz) self-raising flour
  • 75g (2½oz) caster sugar
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 130g (4½oz) unsalted butter, cut into cubes
  • A handful of raisins
  • 3 pieces of dates, chopped up small 
  • 2 tbsp vructenhagel (optional)
  • 1  egg
  • 1 tbsp milk
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
Method:
  1. Preheat oven to 180C and smear some butter onto a baking tray
  2. Mix the flour, sugar and baking powder in a bowl and rub in the cubed butter until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, then mix in the raisins, dates and vructenhagel.
  3. In a clean bowl, beat the egg and milk together with the vanilla extract.
  4. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir with a spoon until the mixture just comes together as a thick, lumpy dough.
  5. Place a ping-pong ball sized dough onto the prepared baking tray. Leave space between them as they will flatten and spread out to double their size during baking.
  6. To add more colours, sprinkle just enough of vructenhagel onto the dough
  7. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden-brown. 
  8. Remove from the oven, allow to cool for a couple of minutes then turn them out onto a wire rack to cool.

Voila!

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