Julia’s Wheat Free Rock Cakes

 

 

I’m always working to improve my recipes but I think this one is pretty good. My partner rates it 8½ out of 10.

 

Ingredients (mem: use organic and fair trade products wherever possible)

 

To make about 17 cakes (I usually freeze a few):

 

• 4 ozs / 113g porridge oats (grind in a blender to make fine)
• 2 free-range eggs
• 4 tablespoons unsweetened soya milk (dairy works too)

 

• 8 ozs / 227g wheat-free, self-raising flour (I use Doves Farm)
• ½ tspn ground cinnamon
• ¼ tspn ground nutmeg
• ¼ tspn ground ginger
• 4 pinches salt
• ½ tspn baking soda
• 1 tspn xanthan gum

 

• 6 ozs / 170g butter or marge

 

• 3 ozs / 85g caster sugar
• 5 ozs / 142g sultanas
• 2 ozs / 57g candied peel (rinse to reduce sugar and separate out)

 

 

Method

 

1. Heat oven to approx. 155ºC  (my oven may not be like yours!)
2. Grease baking trays - enough for 17 splodges!    
3. Whisk the eggs. Add the milk and whisk again.
4. Add the ground oats to the liquid, stir in well and leave to soak. (You want the oats to be soft, otherwise the final cakes can be kind of bitty. But, you don’t want to use too much liquid because the final mixture needs to be quite stiff so it doesn’t flatten in the oven.)
5. In a separate large bowl, add the flour, spices, salt, baking soda and xanthan gum. Stir all together.
6. Add the marge and rub in with your fingertips. (This will be messier than with a conventional - wheat flour - recipe because you haven’t used as much flour for the marge.)
7. Add the oat mixture. Stir all together well - I find a metal dessertspoon best for this.
8. Add the sugar, sultanas and peel. Stir it all again.
9. The mixture should be moist, ‘splodgy’ and needs to be able to hold its ‘rocky’ shape on the tray. If it’s too dry, you can add more milk at this stage - half a tablespoon at a time.
10. Using a fork and a spoon (or whatever works for you), distribute the mixture into rocky heaps on the baking trays. Allow room for a little expansion around each one.
11. Place trays around the lower-middle of the oven for approx 20 mins. (do check intermittently.)
12. When you think they’re done, test with a knife through the centre - if it comes out clean, they are done.
13. Allow to cool. Then, eat / store / freeze.