Rock on... with rock cakes

Rock bottom (silly but true story)
We often go for seaside scrambles. One day Jakob and I took my boys to the beach, told them to be careful and set them relatively loose. They found lots of lovely climbing rocks dotted along the sand and also spotted some chalk. How creative! It wasn’t a long walk, but I suddenly realised it was a quiet walk. And that spelled trouble. Looking a little closer, I was horrified to see a trail of naughty chalk drawings on rocks stretching back the way we’d come. The little tykes were teasing me! It took me half an hour to draw underpants on all the cheeky pictures. And when I finally straightened up, I saw three uniformed officers from the local radar station watching me with amusement from up on the cliff. Goodness knows what they thought! By then the guys were halfway back to the car…

INGREDIENTS

2 cups sifted flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ cup soft margarine

½ cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons raisins

2 medium eggs

1 teaspoon of vanilla

4 teaspoons milk

½ cup dried shredded coconut

Creative diversions...
... because we started too close to bedtime for a dash to the shops and had to rely on what we had in the cupboard:
1. No excuse for not sifting the flour but we couldn't see any lumps - or the sieve for that matter.
2. We used butter straight from the fridge but I put it on top of the oven on a saucer for a bit to soften it. It's definitely better to think ahead and leave it out of the fridge for a couple of hours to soften up.
3. Our half packet of brown sugar was rock hard so we used light cane sugar. Odd then that our back right rock cake still came out darker than the original recipe.
4. The original recipe said four tablespoons of raisins. That sounded a lot. In fact it said tbsp but as I always muddle that up with tsp I wrote it out in full.
5. I forgot to check if they were medium eggs - but we always buy free-range. Either they run around more, get skinny butts and make smaller eggs or have access to more food, get bigger butts and make bigger eggs. Not sure.
6. We scraped some sticky black goo off a vanilla stick. Nowhere near a teaspoon because when we added it to the mixture it looked suspiciously like dirt. Tasted good though.
7. We got the coconut right!

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Take the baking sheets out of the oven and preheat the oven to 360°F or 190°C (165°C if using the fan - the button like a propeller that looks tastelessly like a radioactive sticker)

2. Put a sheet of greaseproof paper on a baking tray to save grimy, unwieldy washing up.

3. Wash your hands then rub the fat into the flour and baking powder until it looks like fine breadcrumbs (though we used our happy yellow mixer called Petal).

4. Add the raisins, sugar and coconut and mix well.

5. Beat together the eggs in a cup (so you can pick out odd bits of shell that escape into the cup instead of having to root about in the flour). Add the vanilla and pour it into the flour mixture. Add the milk slowly while mixing.

6. Even with a mixer, now you really have to wash your hands. Take off any rings, flour your hands first to stop the mixture sticking to your fingers like a Thriller video, flour the countertop and then bring the dough together by hand. It should be moist (though if it ends up rock hard, you'll have an excuse because they're rock cakes).

7. Place spoonfuls of dough on the baking tray and form them into cone shapes. Ours flopped a bit so make them good and pointy. If you like, poke any raisins that are sticking out back into the dough so they don’t get too toasty.

8. Bake for 15 minutes or until they look something like the front rock cake in our picture.

We used coconut, but there are plenty of sensible recipes without. Ours were nice cut open with butter and jam - they tasted a bit like scones, after all. Though on reflection, they probably don't if you stick to the proper recipe :o).

Have fun!

PS We find a metal spatula used sideways is best for getting dough off the countertop :o)