Rock Cakes

It's started raining and you don't quite want to read but you don't quite want to sit still either. This is what rock cakes are for.

They take twenty minutes from start to finish, demand nothing fancier than a bowl and a wooden spoon, and they came out of a time when butter and sugar were rationed and people made cake anyway. That's the thing about rock cakes. They were never trying to be elegant. The whole point is the craggy top, the rough heap shape, the deliberate refusal to look like a proper bun. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract, and this one barely bothers with the formalities.

I make a tray of these when the kitchen needs a smell. Butter rubbed into flour, currants tipped in by the handful, demerara crunched over the top before they go in the oven. By the time the kettle has boiled they're starting to colour. By the time the tea has steeped they're done. I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: rock cakes, rainy Tuesday, enough.

Eat one warm, standing at the counter, before anyone else get to them. That's the cook's privilege. We're only making dinner, except this isn't dinner, this is the small unnecessary thing that turns an afternoon into a kind one.