In sunny South Africa we have a lot of old culinary traditions which date back to our founders and interpret explorers of our country.

One of these is "Biltong", an air dried meat stick, which will be a topic another Hub,

The other is the Rusk.

It is in actual fact is a twice baked bread that formed into hand sized buns, so that they could be eaten, either while in the saddle, or even more enjoyably, with a cup of coffee around the camp fire as the sun came up.

As with any family, the daughters and mothers had there own recipes for what ever was prepared and these would be handed down to the next generation. Needless to say the prowess in the kitchen was an extremely strong bargaining point in the marriage stakes, therefore the competition was always there.

There is many more of these traditional foods, and over time I share these with all on this site.

Well, if this capsule subtitle is not a mouthful wait until you make up a batch for yourself.

As these recipes are handed down and guarded as protectively as any other virtue which would ensure that a fair dowry would be negotiated for there daughters.

Believe it or not there are untold recipes that still are handed down in this modern age.

This recipe which is going to be revealed to you has been around for eons, and kept very secret, it is used by this one particular Afrikaans family, as part of the courting ritual.

Once a daughter meets the man of her dreams and desires, she would carefully in the dead of night while her mother is sleeping, remove the family recipe book, commit the recipe to memory, and make him a batch of these rusks. This would then when properly cooked and dried, would be packed in a new pillow case and brought to him a gift of her fine cooking prowess.

After experiencing this fantastic rusk I did after a courtship of 3 years, of trying to obtain the recipe by any other means, did happily get married. I then had possession of the recipe and proceded to modify it subtley. to make it mine.

I have started a modest business which sells these rusks to a number of individualas and looking at supplyng a couple of coffee shops with the rusks. My daughter is one of my regular customers, and has a daily rusk half an hour before going to her daily Gym session.This works very well for her and has the energy for the workout. This has maintained and kept her regular, even though she has had to be on a course of antibiotics, which was always like a steel door for her constition.

My wife and I have our daily rusk for breakfast I have 2 and a strong cup of coffee, the daily shot of caffiene is also a wake up to the system, so most nutriotinist say.

Equipement needed, a very large mixing bowl, a good mixer with dough hooks (optional, you can do it by hand.), an electric beater, 4 large loaf tins.

Ingredients

8 cups of white cake flour

7 cups of all bran flakes

5 cups of Nutty Wheat (this is a commercial name in SA, if you cannot obtain it, use half and half white bread flour, and wheaten or digestive bran).

10ml Salt

50ml Baking Powder

1 cup Cranberry raisin mix

3/4 cup of plain pecan nuts chopped

3/4 cup plain cashew nuts chopped

2 cups white sugar

500g butter

3 jumbo eggs

500ml buttermilk

125ml milk low fat or 2%

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Grease the loaf tins very thoroughly.

Melt the butter and sugar in a double boiler in low heat an dissolve the sugar completely.

Crumble the all bran flakes so that they are not to large, sift the cake flour, salt and baking powder together, add the Nutty Wheat, mix thoroughly.

Chop the nuts and cranberry mix into neat sized pieces, then add to the rest of the dry ingredients.

Blend the buttermilk into the butter sugar mix and add the eggs and the milk into the mixture.

Once blended add the liquid to dry and mix thoroughly. Like a bread dough the mixture will come a way from the sides of the bowl and you will have a nice sheen.

Divide into balls, about the size of an overgrown golf ball. Place them close together into the waiting loaf tins. You should be able to get 14 balls to a pan, which is 6 or7 pairs side by side, depending on length of your pan.

If you have some left over after filling your pans, put the left over balls into cups that are oven proof.

Bake for 45 minutes or until the tops are nice light brown.

Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, reduce the oven temp to 60 degrees celsius.

Turn out the loaf from the pan onto the drying rack, let stand for 10 to 15 minutes until cool to the touch.

Separate the rusks individually ads they are all joined by their common sides.

Place on the cooling rack so that the air can move around them and put back into the oven for 6 to 8 hours.

Remove and let cool and pack them into a pillow case were they can be stored , whilst waiting consumption.

There is always quicker ways, but none have that same sense of giving of ones self to produce something special.