Mini Afelia, AKA my daughter, loves the recipes she learns at school. In fact, so do I!

These Rock Buns were originally made in her Food Tech class (they never called it that in my day, we knew it as Home Economics, meh!) and we’ve had an overload of these buns lately. It so happens that whatever Mini Afelia bakes at school on a Monday afternoon, it fast becomes our favourite recipe to bake for that week, lol! In one week we had several groups of visitors to our house and they all LOVED this recipe, they were so good we sent some guests away with doggy bags with the remaining buns. My daughter told me that these are called Jammy Buns, but since the texture they have is more akin to a biscuit than a bun, I have (appropriately) renamed them Rock Buns, sorry Miss!

If you’ve ever tasted Farley’s Cake Rusks as a child growing up in the 70’s and 80’s then you will have an idea of what to expect from these Rock Buns. Not overly sweet, a gentle biscuit like texture, not too soft and not too firm, they’re juuuuuust right! You can enjoy them plain, with a filling like jam in the middle or even with chocolate spread and sprinkles/sweets.

This is a perfect recipe for parents to share with their kids, all you need is a bowl, measuring scales and your hands, they’re really easy to make and would be ideal for introducing young bakers to the world of baking (by themselves) with this step by step recipe. My daughter actually executed the entire recipe whilst I photographed her, so very very simple to make with no special tools required. In my opinion baking should be something we can do easily with a handful of ingredients from our store cupboards, it shouldn’t be complicated and this recipe certainly delivers all that, so unleash the baker in you with this simple recipe that makes the most of basic ingredients we all have at home!

Recipe credit: My daughter’s Food Tech class.

Makes 8 large buns OR 12 small buns

You will need: for Mini Afelia’s Rock Buns

100g sugar
200g self raising flour
100g butter/margarine
1 medium egg
jam (optional)
chocolate spread and sprinkles/sweets (optional)

Method:

Measure 100g sugar, 200g self raising flour and 100g of butter in a large bowl.

Cut the butter using a palette knife (or butter knife) into smaller pieces.

Once the butter is cut into smaller pieces, use your hands to rub the ingredients together until they resemble breadcrumbs (bottom left photo).

Make a well in the centre of the ingredients and crack in 1 medium egg.

Combine the ingredients till a ball of dough is formed (top right photo), note that the mixture will be rather oily and this is completely normal.

Place the the dough onto your lightly dusted worktop and shape into an even log. Make sure the log is even at the ends too to ensure the buns are all equal in size.

Using a palette knife cut the log into either 8 or 12 even pieces. We cut our log into 8 pieces for larger Rock Buns.

Using your hands shape the pieces into round balls and place them on a baking tray with a sheet of grease proof paper on top. Allow a 5cm gap between each small ball of dough as the buns will spread in the oven.

Use the tips of your fingers to gently flatten each ball in one direction and then the other (top left and right photo).

If you plan to fill the Rock Buns, use your thumb to indent the centre of each bun, otherwise leave plain.

Place the filling of your choice in the Rock Buns, we used raspberry jam in half of the buns and we left half indented to be filled with chocolate spread after baking.

Bake in a preheated oven at gas mark 5 for 15 – 20 mins until lightly golden brown.

Allow to cool completely on a cooling rack before serving or decorating.

We added a dollop of chocolate spread and topped with M&Ms to our plain Rock Buns after they cooled completely.

Why not double the quantities and make a large batch for when guests come over for afternoon tea? I promise you they won’t linger around for too long!

Bon Appetit!

3.5.3226

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