Kitchen Krafts - Buttermilk Rusks with Raisins

This week I want to share another South African speciality with you all - Rusks. There is nothing nicer than sitting down to a mug of coffee or tea and a couple of yummy rusks. Now, although these are really pretty easy to make they are a bit time consuming and can not be whipped up for your visitors - unless you start 5 hours before they arrive!!

I have added raisins to the traditional buttermilk rusks as I think they just finish them off perfectly. If you are not a fan of raisins you can just omit them from the recipe, or add some other dry fruit like apricots, cranberries etc.. 

So let's begin:

Ingredients
1kg Flour (I like to mix a whole lot of different flours)
10ml Baking Powder
2 Large Eggs
50g Raisins (or as much as you prefer)
10ml Salt
200g Sugar
500ml Buttermilk
190g Butter - melted.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.

Add raisins to dry mixture.

Beat eggs, sugar and buttermilk together.

Add this to your dry ingredients.

Mix this together, and whilst doing so, gradually add the melted butter to the mixture.

Knead the mixture until you get a smooth "doughy" consistency. 

Break off pieces and roll into small balls which you will place side-by-side into a baking form. (It should make roughly 30 balls). The balls should be no higher than 2/3 of the container you place them in.

Now bake in a preheated oven (180 Degrees Celsius) for 30 minutes.

Take the rusks out of the oven, remove from the forms and break into single rusks. Lay them out on a wire rack, drop the temperature of the oven to 100 degrees Celsius and the proceed to dry the rusks out over a period of 4 hours, turning them every half an hour.

Once the 4 hours are up, remove the rusks from the oven, allow to cool completely and then store in an airtight container.

I know they don't look much different once they are done, but they are pretty hard, so don't break a tooth, they need to be dunked in some coffee :-D

Next: Invite Ouma (granny) over for some coffee and rusks - she won't believe how great they are, just like she made them ;-)

I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to share your tips and tricks from the home, your favourite recipes, or traditions which you keep alive.

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Until next week

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