I love making Irish Soda Bread with my kids. It's quick, I always have all the ingredients on hand, and the results are really delicious. The kids love making Irish Soda Bread for this reason: I let them put their hands in the dry ingredients and mush it around. Once we put the wet ingredients in, they use their forks (raw eggs, you know). Then Mama blobs it all out on a cookie sheet and sticks it in the oven. This St. Patrick's Day, we put butter on the warm bread, drizzled it with honey, and ate it as dessert!
Here's the recipe:
Dry:
4 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 TBS sugar
2 TBS caraway seeds Optional. I usually add another 1 tsp
1 cup raisins I usually add another 1/4 cup
Wet:
1 beaten egg
1 cup butter milk
A scant cup of milk (any fat content) with 1 TBS lemon juice works just as well - mix this up first and let it sit on the counter while you're mixing the dry ingredients
1 cup plain yogurt Fat free and reduced fat works just fine if you prefer. I like to use fat free Greek yogurt.
1/4 tsp vanilla extract Optional.
I tried adding vanilla (some of my life-time supply from Mexico) for the first time on St. Patrick's Day because I knew these loaves had dessert as their fate. It was really good!
Steps:
Preheat oven to 375.
Mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients. Mix until just combined - do not over mix. Dough should be very sticky.
Place dough on lightly greased cookie sheet - I always make two loaves and just drop the two roundish blobs on a single sheet.
Bake at 375 for about 30 - 35 minutes. The outside should brown a little.
You can make one big loaf if you want to, just bake it for longer - 45 minutes.
If you make two, you can always freeze the second loaf, wrapped in tin foil.
What fun!
The finished loaves. MMMM!
I'm going to try that this weekend. I have a fresh container of Jumbo Flame raisins that would be perfect for the desserty version.
ReplyDelete*Sigh* The kids spilled the mixed bowl of dry ingredients on the floor while I was measuring the wet ingredients. Back to the drawing board :P
ReplyDeleteI haven't actually dug out my Irish Gram's recipe to compare, but the two look very similar (although I'm very sure Gram's version has no yoghurt). The addition of vanilla sounds interesting.
ReplyDeleteIf you ever run out of your Mexican extract, here's what you should do. Get some vanilla beans and a pint of vodka. Slice beans down the middle, scoop out vanilla loveliness and drop in the vodka. Add the scooped-out bean shells and let bottle sit for a month or two. Boom! You've got a whole pint of lovely vanilla extract for about the price of two tiny bottles.
PJ, that's brilliant about the vanilla. I will let you know how it works out in 2525, if man is still alive. Seriously, I'm willing this vanilla to my kids.
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