BUTTERMILK RUSKS - recipe and pictures

Sometimes there's nothing nicer  than to dunk a rusk into a good cuppa tea or strong coffee...

Store bought rusks are fine (if you can find them) but why not give this recipe a go. It's active relaxation and you can enjoy the results better than a bought one. 

Just like Ouma used to make

BUTTERMILK RUSKS

(bear with me - final outcome photo still to be processed...)

This is what you need:

1 kg self raising flour

5 ml baking powder (1tsp)

10 ml salt (2 tsp)

2 large eggs

200 ml white sugar

500 ml buttermilk

190 g butter, melted (measure the butter first, then chop into chunks and put in a microwavable jug/bowl. 

For this recipe we gave it three 30 second bursts on high power - stirring after each zap - since we used frozen butter)

This is what to do:

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. 

Beat the eggs, sugar and buttermilk together. 

Cut this mixture into the dry ingredients with a knife. 

Knead the dough lightly - gradually adding the melted butter while kneading. 
This will take only a few minutes until it becomes a good soggy dough.

Pack balls of dough tightly into greased loaf pans. The balls should reach about 2/3rds the height of the pans. 

(we rolled balls of dough - then slightly squashed them to form a tube shape to get more in the loaf pan)

So you're probably thinking, "how big does the dough ball have to be?"...
Well, my first attempt - I rolled dough the size of meatballs. These came out humongous and barely fitted into the teacup! (self raising flour has the unique knack of expanding the dough when it cooks. Funny that - hehe) This batch was slightly smaller than a meatball size - and I still had to slice the baked rusks with a sharp bread knife to get them to that dunk-able size . Next batch - I'll try making a whole lot of small balls (the size of a plum) and put them in a large roasting dish so they can be pulled apart after baking and hopefully not need to be sliced. 
But that's the fun in trying something new (and tasty) 

Bake at 180C for 30 minutes (conventional oven). 

Check whether the rusks are done by tapping the top surface; it should sound hollow. 

Turn out onto a wire rack and break into individual rusks. 

If they look too big to fit into your tea cup or coffee mug - feel free to slice them to the required thickness

Lower the oven temperature to 100C and dry the rusks for about 4 hours, turning them every 30 minutes. 
Since we have a fan oven, the temperature was lowered to 75C with fan on for the same amount of time...

Cool on a wire rack and store in airtight containers. 

Will keep for at least 3 months, but believe me, they won't last that long!

So thanks to my mate Ray who sent this recipe, there are now always home-made rusks in the cake tin



BUTTERMILK RUSKS - recipe and pictures