Saving Grace

At long last! I've been meaning to make this great weight of a tea bread for weeks. This is a Welsh tea bread called amusingly Bara Brith, what a gorgeous name! It means 'speckled bread'.

I dizzily didn't realise I had to soak the raisins and sultanas for over six hours in strong tea-honestly! So I had to make it the following week when I was fully briefed on the recipe, which is actually very simple. It makes a lovely heavy, elasticy loaf which should be left for 2 days to mature, but I couldn't help have a sliver today with some Chai...


Recipe time:


500g mixed dried fruit and peel

300ml strong hot tea

250g self raising flour

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1 egg forked to blend


1. Soak the fruit and peel in a large bowl in the tea for at least six hours (don't forget this bit), or overnight.


2. Sieve the flour and spice in to the soaked fruit, don't drain, stir in the sugar and egg. Beat altogether until smooth.


3. Heat the oven to 150 C or gas mark 2. Tip the mix in to a prepared loaf tin and bake for 1 1/2 hours when it should be well risen, firm and brown. Cool and store for two days (if you can) until rich and gluey (Mmm). Use salty butter to spread on to thin slices with a hot cup of tea.






NEVER think you can get away with baking cookies with Flora omega 3 marge, just because it was buy one get one free at Tesco! Utterly Butterly marge works very well actually, but that's not the point.

I thought it may be okay to try making some chocolate pecan goodies without decent ingrediants, what a mistake. Hence why this jar is remaining empty and the blackbirds shall have a feast today. They were tasteless and cakey. They were even described as 'offensive' by a budding cookie fan who tried them warm from the oven! Alas.