My Food Love Story..A Recipe YOU NEED to know!

Look at the steam! Away from the clatter of city life in the Welsh woodland, I'm preparing a dish that's steeped in Welsh tradition. The Barrowbrith. In English, speckled bread. This is a humble tea cake that's rich and fruity. It has dark tea-infused succulent dried fruits with an aromatic essence. And the ritual feeling of cooking it over the fire is a reminder that the best dishes are often those that carry with them stories and memories. This cake is more than a recipe to me. It's a celebration of simplicity and heritage. A nod to the humble Welsh spirit and those who have passed it down through generations. On a cold winter day, I'm cooking mine in my Dutch oven over hot coals. This warming treat is going to go down so well. All right guys, Barrowbrith. I'm going to start off with some flour. And we really need to get some beautiful spices into it. So I'm going to start off by grating in some lovely star anise, some clove. And then I'll add some ground ginger and some ground cinnamon, plus a pinch of salt. All right, and I would usually add some nutmeg, but I don't have any. But I do have a vanilla pod, so I'm actually going to split this down the middle and add the seeds that are inside to the beautiful, now plumped up, dried fruit. To the dried fruit mix, I'm going to add some grated apple, brown sugar, and some chia seeds. Some bird food. So you're probably wondering why I'm adding chia seeds. Because I'm keeping this recipe egg-free. Chia seeds actually are a great replacement because they plump up and create this weird texture that sort of emulates egg and helps everything bind together. So I'm just adding those to the liquid now. They're going to plump up. We'll also add the melted butter into this too. Now it's time to mix up those beautiful aromatic spices with the flour. Make a well, then add the plumped up fruity mixture. Now it's really important not to overmix this. Just gently fold everything together until there's no lumps of flour. And it will be quite wet. That's how we're going to hopefully get a really moist barrowbrith. After mixing your barrowbrith batter, lightly grease some cake tins. I'm using two small loaf tins that fit inside my Dutch oven pot. But just use whatever tin that you have. Just make sure you've greased it with a little oil or plant-based butter. So just fill your cake tin up about three-quarters of the way high. After all, I'm using self-raising flour that has the raising agents within it already. So this will rise up quite a bit. All right, so just before they go in your oven, you can cook these in a normal oven, of course, 180 degrees for about 45 minutes. Give them a tap just to release any trapped air and get that batter right in all the crevices. I've preheated my Dutch oven pot on the coals and it's ready to get my barrowbrith cake in. I'm so excited for this. Let's get my cake in the Dutch oven. I made a mistake once before by having a flame. You do not want a flame when you're doing it like this. You want just hot, hot coals. And now what I'll do, I'll pick up these hot coals and gather them all around and on top so that it cooks quite evenly. Every now and then I'll spin the pot to try and create some sort of even cooking. But it's difficult when you're cooking over fire like this. So I recently went to Jamaica and I visited the Pudding Man. The most unbelievable cakes I've ever eaten in my life. Sweet potato, banana pudding. And the thing that was so incredible about it is that it's just on the roadside. It's so inconspicuous other than the fact that outside there's a load of ovens, but not ovens like you would think. They're basically car rims and they've turned them into these makeshift ovens that work so incredibly well. But what they do is load coals on top and it cooks the cake inside so perfectly. They had a saying that I can't quite remember right now, but it was something like fire on the bottom, fire on the top, and hallelujah in the center, I think. I'm quoting that. Probably wrong, but it was something like that and it really was hallelujah. The cakes were just unbelievable. So hopefully I can do something similar here. All right guys, it's been about 25 minutes. I'm kind of nervous, but let's have a check to see how we're getting on here. I'm just going to carefully lift this up. Oh yes, that's basically ready. Let me get this down. I think we're there. It's getting a little colored on the top. Maybe it's a bit too hot on top, right? So I'm going to take some of these coals off. I'm going to take even more inspiration from Jamaica and the amazing puddings that I had there. They always had this amazing glaze on top. So I'm just going to drizzle over some maple, let that absorb in as it just cooks for the final few minutes. So let's get this lid back on. Okay, we'll leave it for a little bit longer, cook through, let that maple absorb, and then we'll get it out, slice it up and taste. It is time. It is time to take my campfire Barabrith off the fire. Old school style. Let's get this out. What's amazing is that I can actually smell this. Oh, it's hot. Look at the steam. That smells incredible. And it's moist. It's not dried out at all, which is really good. I think I'll let that sit for five minutes before taking it out of my tin. And really, you should let it cool completely before cutting it. But it's getting dark, it's getting colder, and I just need some warming Barabrith inside me. Look at that. Let's get this out. Oh, yes. There we go. Now I'll get my other plate on top. It's been some Barabrith cooked in the fire. There's nothing better than warm Barabrith topped with some butter. So I'm going to get some spread over the top and give it a taste. I've got to stand by the fire and enjoy this. Here goes. So, such a thick slice as well. There's a lot of good memories locked within the flavours of this Barabrith. Not only ones from years ago, growing up in Wales, but also recent being in Jamaica, the cooking technique. It's something about this heat from the fire from all sides and on top and cooking it slowly that traps in the moisture within whatever you're cooking. And it works so good with cakes. This is probably the nicest and the sort of most moist Barabrith I've ever tasted. Oh, wow. That's the beauty of travelling and learning from different cultures, being inspired. And now I've adapted famous Welsh Barabrith recipe to use the technique that I saw in Jamaica to create something. When I have my restaurant or eatery or whatever I do, this will be on the menu.