Barmbrack

Name: Barmbrack
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Yield: 10
Cuisine: Irish
Ingredients: 450 g Mixed dried fruit — sultanas, raisins, currants; 350 ml Hot strong black tea; 220 g Soft brown sugar; 350 g Self-raising flour; 1 Egg, beaten; 2 tsp Mixed spice; 1 tbsp Orange zest; 20 g Butter for the tin; 2 tbsp Honey for glazing

A dark, tea-soaked fruit loaf eaten at Halloween with objects baked inside — a ring for marriage, a coin for wealth, and a rag for whoever the year has it in for.

Fonte

Ricetta di Irish home bakers · 🏺 Tradizionale · No yeast, no proving, no waiting — bicarbonate of soda and sour buttermilk, mixed and in the oven inside five minutes. Bread baked fresh every day because it goes stale by the next one.

Irish · Halloween loaf — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms the fruit loaf with sultanas and raisins, the Halloween tradition of baking objects into it and what each object is said to foretell. Quantities, the overnight tea soak and the safety instruction about wrapping the charms are this book's own.

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Sinead Davies Daniel Diver - Foodie Hub Irish Baker Abroad

⏱ 90 min🍽 10 porzioni🔥 260 kcal🇮🇪 Irlanda

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Passaggi

Put the dried fruit and sugar in a bowl, pour the hot tea over and leave it overnight, or at least 6 hours.
💡 This is the whole recipe. The fruit drinks the tea, the sugar dissolves into it, and what you are left with is a batter that barely needs anything else.
Heat the oven to 170°C and butter and line a 900 g loaf tin.
Stir the egg, mixed spice and orange zest into the soaked fruit, then fold in the flour until just combined.
If you are doing the charms, wrap a ring and a coin in baking paper and push them in from the top.
💡 Wrap them and tell everyone at the table. A ring baked loose into a cake is a choking hazard, not a charming tradition.
Scrape into the tin, level the top and bake 1 hour 10 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
Brush with honey while hot and cool completely in the tin. Serve sliced with cold butter.

💡 Consigli

Brack means speckled in Irish — the name is a plain description of what the loaf looks like when you cut it.
There is no butter or oil in the batter. That is why it keeps for a week and why it is always eaten buttered.
The yeasted version is the older one and the tea-soaked version is what almost every Irish household actually makes.