Friday, August 21, 2009

Rum & Raisin rocks

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I've had the obsession for a few years now. Never really know where it came from, but as soon as I see something with rum and raisins I have to have it! In holland, the traditional "ontbijtkoek" (a special spiced cake usually eaten as breakfast) has a variation with rum and raisins and I simply love it! When I saw a recipe called "rum bread" I immediately had to give it a try and, of course, add raisins.
When I read the recipe I felt like there was something wrong and when I made the recipe I realised I was right: the dough that you would get from making this looked like the sandcookies I used to make when I was little and nothing at all like the dough you need for a bread. Nevertheless, I went through all the steps and changed the recipe to make turn the dough into a real cookie-dough. I split the dough in half and baked tehe cookies I made from them seperately. The first set of cookies turned out a bit hard, the reason they are called rocks. The second set, which I baked a bit shorter, turned out softer and, personally, I liked those better. My family didn't seem to be bothered by the difference and I cought my mom eating near 10 of them in one day! Needless to say, they were gone in no time and a real succes!!

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Ingredients:
375 gram flour
1 pinch of salt
1 package baking powder
150 grams (unsalted) butter
150 grams sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon rum essence, or real rum
1 cup raisins


1. Sift the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder through eachother. Mix the raisins in as well. Make a well in the middle of the mixture.
2. With and electric mixer mix the butter until it's soft. One by one, add the eggs and mix them in well before adding the next. Add the rum essence as last.
3. Poor this mixture into the well in the flour. First, use a fork or spoon to mix the two mixtures, later on kneed them into eachother.
4. Spread a baking sheet out over an oven rack and roll the dough into balls, splat them and place them on the baking sheet. Or, if you have more time, use a rolling pin to spread the dough out over a lightly floured surface. Use a cookie cutter to get shapes out of the dough and place these on the baking sheet.
5. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius or 370 degrees Fahrenheit. When the oven has preheated put the oven rack in and leave the cookies in the oven for about 10 minutes. When the cookies seem dry, take them out and leave them on the counter.

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There you go! Your own Rum & Raisin rocks! If you want them to have the real crumbly "rock"-effect bake them a little longer until the surface gets a bit darker colour. Make sure to not leave them in too long! They happen to burn fast. I thought the cookies went really well with milk or tea!

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