Find a friend with a surplus of Seville oranges to make your own chunky marmalade, it works best in this recipe. Alternately, head across to Rotunda Farm Stall for a jar of their locally produced and very delicious Seville Orange Marmalade. This is a small batch, it will make one standard oven tray and they will soon be eaten.
Marmalade Breakfast Rusks
2 cups Self-raising flour
1 ½ cups Oats
½ cup Sunflower Seeds
½ cup Pumpkin Seeds
1 cup Brown sugar
1 tsp Salt
1 cup Marmalade – if you are making the marmalade yourself, chunky cut marmalade will be best
1 cup Buttermilk
2 Jumbo Eggs
125g Butter melted
1 tsp Cinnamon & 1 tsp Ground Ginger (optional)
Preheat the oven to 180C
Mix the self-raising flour, oats, sugar, seeds, spice and salt together in a large bowl.
In another bowl whisk marmalade into melted butter, add eggs and whisk, add your buttermilk and mix.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until you get a thick dough-like batter. If it is a bit dry, add a splash more buttermilk. A sticky batter is good but do not overmix.
Place your rusk batter into a rectangular baking tin that has been lined with baking paper. The tin size should be roughly 22cm x 30cm with a 4cm rim. Spread evenly in the tin.
Bake for 40 or 45 minutes and until a light golden brown.
Once rusks are cooked through, remove and allow to cool on a rack. Slide or tip over onto a supporting rack with care so they do not break apart. After about 30 minutes, or when the rusks are properly cool, place on a large cutting board. Cut rusks to the size that you prefer. Place these on the rack that fits in your oven pan, allow for a gap in between each rusk.
Dry out overnight in a 60C oven or for 3 hours in a 100C oven. Turn them over once if you can. If you cut your rusks thick, they will need a longer second bake/drying time.
Electric oven user note: If you are using an electric oven loosely cover with tin foil at the start of baking to prevent the top surface from over browning, remove this foil after 20 minutes of baking.
Gas oven user note: For a gas oven, bake in a double layer oven tray or line the tin with 2 layers of paper or use cardboard for the bottom layer. In a gas oven there is no need for a foil cover on top. When you dry the rusks during the second bake, wedge a wooden spoon between the oven and the oven door.
Next up – all of the above with a few hand broken pieces of Chocolate Sensations Belgian dark chocolate!