Ms Pigott's rock cakes

Ingredients

• 225g/8oz self-raising flour
• 75g/2½oz caster sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 125g/4½oz unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 150g/5½oz dried fruit
• 1 free-range egg
• 1 tbsp milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 and line a baking tray with baking parchment.
2. Mix the flour, sugar and baking powder in a bowl and rub in the cubed butter until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, then mix in the dried fruit.
3. In a clean bowl, beat the egg and milk together with the vanilla extract.
4. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir with a spoon until the mixture just comes together as a thick, lumpy dough. Add a teaspoon more milk if you really need it to make the mixture stick together.
5. Place golfball-sized spoons of the mixture onto the prepared baking tray. Leave space between them as they will flatten and spread out to double their size during baking.
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden-brown. Remove from the oven, allow to cool for a couple of minutes then turn them out onto a wire rack to cool.