DON’T forget the SUGAR Rusks I wasn’t going to post this, but then I said to myself not everything in this world is perfect. So I got all my ingredients ready and away I went. About 20-25 years ago Brian and I were invited to spend the weekend at a friend’s holiday home at Begha close to Port Alfred. Adeline Ewing made the most delicious homemade rusks. I wrote down the recipe and made the rusks once and resorted to buying them from Woolies because I just didn’t have the time. I was scrumaging through bits of paper in my recipe drawer and came across the recipe. I decided to give them a try. I popped them into the oven and promptly started to clean up and pack away the ingredients when to my disappointed horror I noticed my container of brown sugar on the counter. I looked on in disbelief, slowly realizing I didn’t put the sugar into my rusk mix. I absolutely couldn’t waste all these beautiful ingredients so I hauled the tray out of the oven. They had already started to rise. I didn’t care. I automatically scraped the pan into a bowl filled with the 2 cups of sugar and mixed like crazy in the hope that this sorry mess could be saved. The second time around I lined my pan with baking paper. This was a great decision. I scooped the mix back into the pan and spread it out and quickly shoved it back into the oven. After going through the cooking and drying process they were ready to enjoy with our morning coffee. I thought I’d cut them too big and they weren’t as crunchy as I would have liked them. I then decided to cut them in half again and put them back into the oven to dry out for an additional 2 hours. Finally they were perfect. I’m not a natural baker, I do prefer to cook. It’s more forgiving! I’m so happy I didn’t have to throw them away. Brian asked me to do a costing so I’ve included that in one of the photos at the end.

Rusks - Don't forget the sugar

Instructions

Mix together 3 exl eggs with 500ml buttermilk
Melt 500g BUTTER (Recipe calls for marg. I don't eat it anymore)
Add 1kg self raising flour to bowl
Add 15ml baking powder
5ml salt
Add 6 cups or 250-300g AllBran Flakes
I used big oats
Add 1 and a quarter cups of oats to dry ingredients (150g)
Add 1 cup raisins (150g)
Toasted cashews 100g
Toasted Almonds 100g
Roughly chop nuts.
Not too small
Surprise ingredients I added 2 Tbls of toasted mixed seeds. Don't forget the SUGAR. AS you can see there's no photo of the sugar. Mix all these dry ingredients together
Add the melted butter. I tried mixing with a spatula, a wooden spoon and a metal spoon but gave up and used my hands
I rubbed rubbed the melted butter into the dry ingredients
Add the egg mix into the buttered ingredients
Don't forget the SUGAR.
Spread the mix into a large oven tray pop into the oven at 180°C for about 40-50 minutes. I did the required 40min but my nose said they smell a bit doughy. So I cooked for an add 10 min. Probably could have gone for an hours. I think because I added extra nuts and seeds the cooking time should be adjusted.
This is me adding the sugar
Second time around I lined the pan with baking paper
After baking for 50 min. Let cool for 5 min and then cut into desired size. I cut 9 X 5 initially. These were too big
After 3 hours of drying out on the oven at 100°C
Here's me cutting them in half. This gives a yield of 2,570kg or 90 rusks.
Back into the oven for another 2 hours at 100°C
Perfect rusks and Brian loves them
Original recipe with my notes. Don't forget to add the sugar
Woolies rusks at R96 for 700g. Mine are R65 for 700g excluding my time and electricity and near heart failure of thinking they were going to have a be thrown in the bin. You can use less nuts that will bring the cost down too. Enjoy with a nice cup of coffee in your garden. Happy Sunday and as I write this we are now halfway through 21 days of LOCK DOWN