Buttermilk Rusk Recipe

Visits to my hairdresser are always social affairs and more like going for coffee with the girls than the tedious few hours it used to be in an impersonal salon...

I digress. Nicky needed ideas for her son's South African Food day at school (he's a gorgeous grade one). We settled on rusks which means a blog post is necessary! I haven't been avoiding blogging, I've just been very busy living (met a new man, introduced him to salad, planted out a few hundred seedlings, trained for an adventure race, cooked many meals, put all my 'extra' stuff into storage, tidied up my house, ran a few hundred km, cycled a few hundred more, etc.)

We always have rusks in the house (it's one of Ouma's responsibilities to keep her busy - which has become my responsibility as she's not able to do it alone anymore). We have a few recipes we follow but the most popular (all over SA - the little sister travels and 'pays' for her accommodation at friends in boxes of rusks) by far is a recipe I got from a friend's housekeeper about 15 years ago.


Stina's Rusks

1kg Self raising flour
4 cups NuttyWheat flour (whole wheat)
2 cups sugar
10ml Cream of Tartar
10ml Bicarbonate of Soda
2ml Salt
500g butter or margarine
250ml boiling water
500ml Buttermilk

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Grease a large, square baking tin.

Mix dry ingredients in a big mixing bowl.

Melt butter in another big bowl. Mix in the buttermilk, rinse the buttermilk carton out with the boiling water and add this water to the mix. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until thoroughly blended. Put the mixture into your baking tin and bake for 1 hour.

Remove from the tin and once cool enough to handle cut into fingers and arrange on the wire shelves from your oven - the more gaps there are between the rusks the faster they dry. Reduce the oven temperature to 70-100 degrees and return the rusks until they are dry throughout. 

Store in an airtight container once cool.

Variations can include adding pretty much any seeds, raisins, dried fruit, etc.

Dunk in tea or coffee :)