Hi Bold Bakers.
A lot of people ask me do we celebrate Halloween in Ireland.
Well in actual fact Halloween originated from the ancient Celts in Europe before it spread
throughout the world.
Around this time, a time that we call All Hallows Eve, we eat a cake called Baren Brach.
This cake is rich in tradition and I'm going to share those traditions and stories with
you today.
As always the written recipe can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com.
So our first step is to soak our fruit.
I have a nice big bowl here and into it we're going to add in all of our ingredients.
So first things first is raisins.
And then I'm going to follow that with some golden sultanas.
You can also use golden raisins, currants, whatever you like.
And then we have a nice bit of brown sugar.
This just makes the cake nice and rich and almost has kind of a caramel molasses-y taste.
And then we're going to follow that with some zest.
This is very common in Ireland to have cakes that are rich with fruit and with zest like
this.
It really reminds me of the holiday season.
Do yourself a favor and zest a nice big orange just so you get a little bit extra in there.
And then some lemon.
Nice big lemon also.
Okay lovely all the zest is in here.
Now our secret ingredient to this is tea.
So this is a black tea that I have here.
It's nice and hot.
It's two cups and I put four tea bags in here to make it really lovely and strong because
the stronger the tea, the better the flavor of the cake.
You can use English breakfast tea, Irish breakfast tea, Earl Grey if you want.
I usually stick to Irish breakfast tea.
And then just go ahead and pour that in there.
Nice strong tea, minus the tea bags.
Don't add the tea bags in there.
And then what you want to do is give it a good mix to make sure that everything is combined.
The hot tea here will dissolve the sugar and it also will rehydrate the fruit and make
it really lovely and plump.
Okay, then just cover this guy with some cling wrap.
So here's what we're going to do.
We're going to leave this out at room temperature overnight, minimum of eight hours and just
let the flavors macerate and get really lovely and strong.
So I'm just going to put it over to the side and we're going to get started with our next
step.
So here I have a nice new bowl into this we're going to add in our dry ingredients.
Some flour, baking powder, and some mixed spice.
Now if you don't have mixed spice in your country, I have a recipe on my website of
how you can easily make it or you can also change it with pumpkin spice and that's a
really good substitute.
Just a little bit of cinnamon, ginger, cloves, things like that just to make it kind of aromatic.
Then we're just going to whisk those ingredients together.
You know something just occurred to me, mixed spice is not the same as allspice.
So just make sure you don't use allspice instead.
Ok lovely, now into our dry ingredients we're going to add in our beaten eggs and half of
our fruit mixture.
This is fruit that I soaked yesterday so it would be ready in time to make the cake.
And then with a spatula, just fold it all together.
Then once it starts to come together, add in the rest of your fruit.
So in olden times in Ireland, Halloween coincided with the harvest of fruit so people would
gather it to start making Christmas cakes.
It was a really good way to preserve it as fruit was a real luxury.
So barn brach is a little bit of a taster of what your Christmas cake will be like,
a promise of Christmas to come.
It's not as rich as Irish Christmas cake but it still has loads of fruit and spices.
Barn brach translated from Irish into English means speckled loaf, meaning that there was
fruit kind of sparse throughout the loaf.
So there we go, it's all come together.
Don't be worried about adding all that tea in there because the cake does need it.
This is nice and mixed, no more lumps of flour, so now we're gonna get this into our tin.
So just pour your batter into a greased and lined cake pan.
You can use anything from a 9 to 10 inch cake pan and that will work well.
Or you can use a springform pan.
Lovely.
So a tradition around barn brach was one of my most favorite growing up.
You put a charm on the inside of the cake so when you buy it in a bakery or a shop,
you'll slice the cake and you'll see who'll get the charm and they mean different things.
There's different charms that you can put in there.
You can put in a dried pea which means you wouldn't marry.
You can put in a little piece of cloth which means you'd be poor, which is kind of sad.
You can put in a coin which means you'll be rich, so that's awesome, I like that one.
And then you can also put in a little ring to say that you'll be married within the year.
I am going to put in a little ring here into my one.
Just get one at the pound shop, really inexpensive.
Or you can put in a coin or something.
Wrap it in a little piece of parchment paper and then just pop it anywhere into the batter
of the cake.
And that will bake safely in there, no problem wrapped in the parchment paper.
So that's it, that's our barn brach, super easy.
We're gonna pop this into the oven now and get it baking.
So bake your barn brach off at 325 degrees Fahrenheit or 170 degrees Celsius for roughly
90 minutes or so.
Fruit cakes do take quite a long time to bake.
So check this out, it's been roughly 90 minutes.
This is gorgeous, it's well risen.
It really is a nice big cake and it's golden brown all over the top.
This is exactly what we're looking for.
I love this cake because the raisins and the spices that we used scream fall baking to
me in Ireland.
And of course, as you can see, I found the ring.
I'm not gonna tell Kevin I found that.
So barn brach is traditionally served with butter if you have Kerrygold at home, even
better.
And then simply enjoy.
I love this because it transports me right back to Ireland, to fall time, to the holidays,
to Halloween growing up, to having toasted barn brach with a cup of tea, and then also
getting ready for Christmas and what's to come with that and the fruitcake and everything.
This recipe really does hold a lot of nostalgia for me, but I really think no matter where
you are in the world, you should definitely give this a try and create your own memories.
Thank you for allowing me to share a little bit of my Halloween tradition and what I grew
up with in Ireland.
I really hope you enjoyed this episode.
I'll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.
