Background

If you need the back-story please see my first post. But to catch you up quickly, I’m cooking my way around the world through a global food trip.

My first destination is Dublin, Ireland…or thereabouts. What does everyone think of when they think Irish food? Right…mint ice cream.  Nonono, it is really corned beef and cabbage…but that would be wrong too. Believe it or not, most Irish people don’t really eat corned beef and cabbage, for some reason that is an American Irish thing. Sure, they serve it in Ireland when you go to visit, but it is mostly for the tourists. My searches led me far and wide for my first dishes and I saw a lot of traditional Irish stuff like breads and stews, but not really much around corned beef at all. Cabbage makes it into stews for sure, along with plenty of potatoes but the US St. Patrick’s day staple is not as common where people seem to expect. The general specialties seemed to be fish, stew and bread, so it made sense to pick something from those general categories to get started. How about we start basic…bread!

Barmbrack

Fruitcakes seem to be the butt of a lot of jokes around Christmas in the US, but I’m pretty convinced that the fruitcakes we see at the holidays now are the Taco Bell Waffle Taco of fruited desserts. Somewhere back in time, there used to be amazing fruit breads, but the side trip down the stuff-everything-possible-into-a-decadent-cake road has seen ingenuity process most of the delicious out of it. No offence if you love fruitcake…but I think the audience there is small. The fruit bread I found from Ireland didn’t seem to be anything like the fruitcakes of your imagination, and the result was anything but, so don’t bail on me yet.

I found a lot of mentions of barmbrack (or just brack), which is a leavened and lightly spiced dough with citrus and currants. It seems like barmbrack is mostly made around Halloween for celebrations and they even like to hide little treasures baked inside like gold rings or trinkets! I saw a bunch of mentions of it, and even saw it listed as a quintessential Irish recipe, so thought I’d give it a whirl. Here’s the list of ingredients.

5 cups all purpose flour
2 eggs
1/4 tsp kosher salt
3.5 oz. (about 2/3 cup) Thompson raisins 
3.5 oz. (about 1 cup) black currants
8 oz. strong, fresh brewed black tea
1/4 cup unsalted softened butter
1 tbsp dried yeast
1.5 cups water (100 degrees F)
1/4 cup sugar (for dough)
1 tsp sugar (for yeast)
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 orange
1 tsp mixed spice (see below for formula)
Notes
  • I’m not going through all the steps because it is done more artfully on my main source The Spruce Eats. I also borrowed ideas from The Irish Times, The Guardian, and the
    Penn State Extension Philadelphia Master Gardeners for reference.
  • The main adjustments I made to The Spruce Eats recipe were 1) adding currants, 2) soaking fruit in tea 3) zest in place of candied peel and 4) adding spices to the dough.
  • Citrus zest was a replacement for candied peel, mostly because I didn’t have it, and it turned out to be a great substitution.
  • Currants and raisins are common, but I also saw other fruits used like cherries and blueberries.
  • I used a good strong tea, Bewley’s Dublin Morning.
  • It is important that the tea is hot for soaking the fruit.
  • I let the dark fruit soak in the tea for an hour, but would have been way better if it were 4 or 6.
  • Mixed spice is a blend of some common baking spices that seems to be referenced a lot in the UK. See the Daring Gourmet for the formula I used.
    • 2 tsp allspice
    • 3 tsp cinnamon
    • 2 tsp nutmeg
    • 3/4 tsp mace
    • 1 tsp ground cloves
    • 1 tsp ground coriander
    • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • I had no mace for my attempt, so I think the spice balance was slightly off.

Other than the tea soaked fruit, spices and citrus zest, this ended up being similar to several other yeast breads I had made in the past. As soon as the dough starts to form, the leavened aroma fills the kitchen and it creates a ton of anticipation. When the baking was done, I wanted to cut right into it. But I restrained myself and let it cool.

Barmbrack – Ireland

The recipe makes two pretty decent sized loves of Barmbrack like these I photographed here, recently out of the oven, but cooled and freshly buttered. The citrus flavor is light and mild, and the dark fruit flavor comes through in small bursts with just a hint of the rich tea. It is pretty good plain but is downright fantastic when it is lightly toasted with butter. In fact, that is exactly how we ate most of it. This is an undoubted hit right out of the gate, and will definitely be making it again.

Adjustments

So, if I am making this again, what would I do differently? Not a whole lot really. I do think that the spice ratio was probably a little off, and I’d like to see how it works with mace. Maybe a bit too much allspice. The currants and raisins were very good, but I might even add a bit more of them, and/or possibly some other kinds of dark dried fruit. The tea soak was really interesting and it gave the fruit a deep, rich flavor, even so, I would let that soak a couple more hours. The last thing I’d do, not that it was in many of the sources, but maybe I’d add a drop or two of vanilla.

So, what’s next? I still have one more Ireland dish so maybe one recipe per post? Not sure yet of the long term plan, but the short term plan is Dublin Coddle next.