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Barmbrack: Traditional Irish Halloween Cake

A yeasted fruit bread called Barmbrack is the traditional Halloween cake served in Ireland. Following Irish customs, small fortune-telling objects are baked inside the Hallowen brack. Depending on what which object you recieved in your portion of the cake would fortell your future.

Barmbrack: Irish Halloween Cake - Photo: Wikipedia.org

Traditionally, these are the objects you would find inside this Halloween cake, along with their associated meanings:

A pea: the finder will not marry that year

A small coin (sixpence): will recieve good fortune and money

A small stick: will have an unhappy marriage with constant arguments

A small piece of cloth: will have bad luck or be poor

A ring: will be married within the year

As you can see, most of the fortune-telling items didn't have very happy outcomes! If you choose to bake your own barmbrack, I would suggest you substitute these items for ones that present a slightly better outcome for the year. In commercially prepared barmbracks, bakers still include a toy ring.

Baking Your Own Irish Halloween Cake

These small "cakes" are made with yeast and raisins, and served toasted with butter along with a cup of tea in the afternoon. It's not really a "cake" but more of a bread/bun texture. In Ireland it is sometimes called Báirín Breac. Báirín is gaelic for "top" and breac informs us that the top is "dirty" or speckled. Here is a recipe that you can try out for yourself.

Recipe For Barmbrack

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups (850 ml) strong tea
(Note: often 1/2 is strong tea and the other half is good Irish whiskey)
1 lb. (450g)golden raisins
1 lb (450g) black raisins
2 cups (450g) brown sugar
2 cups (450g) all-purpose flour
1 tbsp (15 ml) baking powder
3 eggs, slightly beaten
6 tbsp (90 ml) honey

Directions

1. Soak the golden and black raisins with the 2 cups of brown sugar overnight in the strong tea (or tea/whiskey mixture if you decided to use it instead)

2. Preheat oven to 300 F (150 C). Grease 3 8"x4" loaf pans.

3. Blend flour and baking powder together. Gradually add the flour mixture and eggs to the tea mixture.

4. Spoon the dough evenly between the 3 loaf pans. Bake 1 hour & 45 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool in pans for 10 minutes.

5. While the cake/bread is cooling, heat honey until warm and liquidy. Turn cakes out onto a cooling rack and glaze tops with the melted honey.

If you've enjoyed baking and eating this customary "cake" why not try out another traditional dish from Ireland: Colcannon: A Favorite Irish Halloween Meal

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Image of Brambrack used under the GNU Free Documentation License