Butter – Bran Rusks

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 500 g butter
• 400 ml sugar, dark brown
• 1 kg flour
• 12 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 500 ml wheat bran
• 750 ml cornflakes (all-bran flakes or whole-grain flakes)
• 2 large eggs
• 500 ml buttermilk

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour; Rest time approx. 8 hours; Total time approx. 9 hours

South African rusks/dry pastries

Melt the butter in a saucepan and dissolve the sugar in it. Mix the dry ingredients, first crumbling the All Branflakes slightly. A large bowl is best. Mix the eggs and buttermilk with a fork. Add the melted butter-sugar mixture and the buttermilk-egg mixture to the dry ingredients. Mix everything well with a wooden spoon. A sufficiently large food processor will also work, of course. Knead everything thoroughly with your hands, otherwise the flour will stick to the All Branflakes. The mixture will be more like a sponge cake than a dough. Pour the batter into a greased square (23x23cm) loaf pan or two rectangular loaf pans. Bake at 180°C for one hour. After baking, remove from the oven and let cool completely. Turn the “rusk cake” out of the pan and cut into approximately 2cm thick slices using a bread knife or an electric knife. Then cut the slices into 2cm wide pieces. If the rusks aren’t completely cold, they’ll crumble quite a bit when cut. Place the rusks on a baking tray and dry at 100 degrees Celsius for about 6 hours, turning them over halfway through. I’ve also dried them overnight at 60-80 degrees Celsius. When the rusks are cold, store them in an airtight container; they’ll keep for months. As a variation: replace ¼ of the All Branflakes with muesli or add a handful of raisins. A brief background to the recipe: Rusks (or beskuit in Afrikaans) are a traditional dish in South Africa. Although the translation of rusks is rusk, you can’t compare the two. The tradition probably started with the first Dutch people in the Cape Province and was adopted by the Trekboers. Rusks were a substitute for cake when traveling and kept forever. When you dip them in coffee or tea, the flavor really develops. Of course, there are many more varieties today than there were 300 years ago, and rusks are simply a staple here with a coffee between meals. Dip them into coffee or tea with your meal and enjoy.