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Rock cakes, like this rock cake recipe are one of the easiest and quickest buns to make. Rock cakes are great fun for children to make as they produce perfect bite-sized cakes every time. Serve warm with a little butter as a tea time treat.-

225g Self-Raising Flour

My baking cupboard was bare so I had to pick almost everything up from the supermarket before I could begin.  I’ve always been partial to Sultanas more than dried fruit so I decided (as I am cheap) to not buy currants and use 165g of them instead.  I still find this works fantastically.

Before I began mixing I whacked the oven on at 200c/400F/Gas 6 to warm up.  I also greased my trays beforehand not that it really makes any difference.  Now, time to get messy!

Sieve the flour and baking powder into a bowl and add the butter.  Get your fingers in and rub it all together until you get a nice breadcrumb mixture.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, as my butter wasn’t quite softened enough it was a touch lumpy.

Add in the sugar and the fruit of whichever description you have and mix it in thoroughly.  You may as well stick with using your hands as you’re already messy and stirring will just result in an almighty mess unless you have a massive bowl.  Which I didn’t.

Add in the Egg and the first tablespoon of milk and mix together.  The aim here is to get a stiff dough, similar to if you were making cookies.  If it isn’t moist enough add another spoonful and try again.  Mine took all 3 spoonfuls and didn’t combine properly until I ditched the spoon and went with my hands again.

Lay out the (pre-greased) trays and split the mixture into 12 equally sized balls.  The mixture will rise by a decent amount so don’t worry if they seem a little small.  The recipe says to sprinkle the cakes with Demerara sugar but mine didn’t stick very well.  I’d advise putting

some in a bowl/plate and dipping the cakes so it is stuck to the top a bit better.

Stick them in the oven and bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown and well risen.  They should now look like the namesake rock except with a lovely sugary crust

.

congratulations, you now have delicious warm cake.  Gobble down as many as you can with a nice cup of tea before they are cold and only mildly less delicious.

Cost: Very cheap as it is all standard baking fare.

Effort: Super simple, all mixed and in the oven in 15 minutes, ready to eat in 30.  Also they are very good fun to make.  Especially for (people with the mindset of) children.

Satisfaction: Mmm Delicious warm cake.  Just be careful when transporting so you don’t knock off the sugary crust.

Taste Reviews:

Me: Apart from my second sugary crust failure in as many attempts these came out perfect.  I knocked them up during half time of South Africa – Uruguay and was tucking into their cakey goodness by the time Forlan had shut up those damned vuvuzelas.  It’s hard to decide which was better. 9/10

Chunky hard fruity buns.

Summary

Ingredients

Equipment

Oven. Mixing bowl. Knife to mix with. Scales (or just estimate). Baking sheet. Greaseproof paper.

Detailed Instructions

Alternatives to the Sultanas or Raisins

The recipe easily makes several other cakes, some of which taste & feel substantially different, by replacing the sultanas/raisins with something else. For example:

Miscellaneous

Origin

Family recipe dating back at least to my grandmother & probably earlier.

Although I was used to make them as my mother had using white sugar in it, I once ran out of white when making it, used moist brown and found it tasted better. I mentioned it to her and was told that what I had accidentally rediscovered was her mother's recipe that had been reduced to white sugar by her to save money. The raisin improvement I likewise found out when my local supermarket ran out of sultanas. The chocolate drops alternative was suggested to me by a reader of this site who had likewise run out sultanas & raisins but had chocolate drops and found they worked too. The lemon curd, apple & coconut options were also suggested by visitors to this site. Hence if you don't have one of the ingredients, try substituting (with something safe to eat) and see what the result is; it could well be an improvement!

The milk I did not know about until another reader of mentioned that their family used to include milk. I asked my mother and she revealed that her mother's recipe had "add up to 1 dsp milk if the egg is small" which she had ignored (I assume as egg sizes in the UK had been standardised by the 1970s) so I added that milk as an option to my recipe.

Similarly I did not know about the mixed spice until a reader mentioned it. I asked my mother and she told me that the  recipe had mixed spice when she got but she removed the mixed spice because my father did not like the stuff.