My Mum was an excellent cook and when I was growing up I used to help in the kitchen quite a lot making meals as well as baking cakes and biscuits.  When it was time to leave home I bought a little box and some blank postcards and wrote down all my favourite recipes and one of those was Rock Cakes.  I'm going to share that recipe with you today.  As you will have probably started to gather I like recipes that you can customise to your own taste and this is no exception!

ROCK CAKES

INGREDIENTS

1. 8oz Self Raising Flour
2. 4oz Sugar
3. 4oz hard baking margarine (like Stork)
4. 1 egg
5. half a teaspoon of mixed spice
6. 2oz sultanas

METHOD

1. Put the flour and margarine into a mixing bowl and rub together with your fingers until combined.
2. Stir in the sugar, mixed spice and sultanas.
3. Beat the egg in a cup and then add to the mix and stir in well - this takes a little bit of effort and the mixture is quite stiff.
4. Grease a baking sheet and place little heaps of mixture in rows until you have used up all the mixture.  You should make about 9 or 10 rock cakes depending on the size.
5. Bake at Gas mark 6 (200 degrees C) for 10-15 minutes until they are golden.
6. Leave to cook for a couple of minutes before removing to a cooling rack.

CUSTOMISATION
Basically, the flour, sugar, margarine and egg make up the basic recipe and you can flavour the cakes however you like.  I have made them with 1oz of coconut and 2oz of chopped glace cherries many times and recently I tried out a new flavour which was the zest of an orange and 2oz of dried cranberries and they were delicious.

I hope that you have fun trying out your own ideas - let me know how you get on.  My daughter keeps asking me to make them with chocolate chips in so I think I will be trying that next!

CRANBERRY AND ORANGE ROCK CAKES

TOFFEE AND CHOCOLATE ICE-CREAM PIE

Hi, here is my second recipe for you to try.  It is a dessert this time and it is very easy to make.  It has a bit of  a 'wow' factor when you bring it to the table so you could you use when entertaining friends and family.  Also you can make it in advance and leave it in the freezer until needed so it's great if you are entertaining as you can concentrate on the main course.  It is called toffee and chocolate ice-cream pie and it comes from the Hairy Bikers Perfect Pies recipe book.

TOFFEE AND CHOCOLATE ICE-CREAM PIE

Ingredients

1.  Tub of good-quality chocolate ice cream
2.  Some ready made toffee sauce
3.  Tub of good quality vanilla or caramel ice cream
4.  2 x 37g packets of maltesers
5.  2 x chocolate flake bars
6.  300g chocolate bourbon biscuits
7.  75g butter

Method

1. Line an 8" tin with tin foil
2. Break the biscuits into chunks and blitz them in a food processor to make crumbs.
3. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.
4. Combine the biscuit crumbs and melted butter.
5. Press the biscuit mixture over the bottom and sides of the tin to make a base, freeze for an hour.
6. Take the ice cream out of the freezer and leave to stand for 5 minutes
7. Take the biscuit base out of the freezer and assemble the pie as follows:  Place alternate scoops of ice cream over the base until it is covered.  Dot with maltesers and chunks of flake and drizzle toffee sauce over the top.
8. Return to the freezer for at least an hour.
9. Remove from the freezer for about 10 minutes before serving
10. Serve and Enjoy!

You could vary this recipe by using different biscuits in the base, different flavour ice cream and different sweets for the topping.  I hope that you have fun with this recipe.  Let me know if you try out any of your own variations.

CRISPY BARS

Hi  Here's my first recipe!  I thought I would keep it simple to begin with so I have chosen a recipe with only 4 ingredients (with an optional 5th) and you need the same amount of each ingredient so you can make more or less of this recipe really easily.  This recipe comes from 'The Dairy Book of Family Cookery' first published in 1983, I picked it up second hand somewhere.

Ingredients for Crispy Bars:
100g butter
100g mini marshmallows
100g toffee
100g rice crispies

Method:

1. Line a tin with foil, the one I use is 12" x 8" - if you have something smaller that will be fine, the finished bars will just be a bit chunkier.
2. Melt the butter, marshmallow and toffee in a saucepan over a low heat until they are all really well combined, let the mixture cook for a couple of minutes but keep stirring and don't let it burn.
3. Remove from the heat and stir in the rice crispies.
4. Spoon the mixture into the foil lined tin and spread out evenly - I find a metal spoon best for this job as the mixture is rather sticky.
5. Allow to become cold before cutting up into pieces - whatever size you like! 
6. EAT!!

TOP TIP - You must NOT put the mixture into the fridge to cool

OPTIONAL EXTRA - Melt 50g chocolate and drizzle over the crispy bars when they are cold, allow to set before cutting up the bars.

I hope that you enjoy trying out this recipe.

Welcome

Hi!

My name is Janet and this my new blog.  I enjoy cooking and trying out new recipes and giving them my own twist.  I will be sharing recipes with you and photographs of how they turned out.

Hope you enjoy reading my blog,

From

Janet