There must be almost as many recipes for barm brack as there are people who love eating it – or at least as there are mums of people who love eating it. Barm in this case comes from an old word for ‘yeast’ – when i first went to Manchester I wondered what barm cakes were… not cakes at all but flattened bread rolls/buns/teacakes/muffins/baps – and brack is not the same as brackish which is rather nasty water, brack merely comes from a word meaning speckled because the barmbrack is speckeld with dried fruit.
Here’s my recipe:
Barm Brack
- ¼ pt slightly tepid milk
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp fresh yeast
- 8 oz plain flour
- 1 heaped tsp mixed spice
- pinch salt
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1½ oz butter
- 6 oz mixed dried fruit
- 2 oz extra caster sugar
- add the yeast and the 1 tsp sugar to the milk and leave it to froth
- sieve together the flour, 2 oz sugar and spice and rub in the butter
- make a well in the centre and add the yeast mixture and the egg
- beat well for about 10 mins until you have a nice dough
- add the fruit and the salt, and knead well in by hand
- cover and leave in a warm place for about an hour to rise until it’s doubled in size
- knock back and knead lightly
- place in a greased 7 in round cake tin and leave it to rise again for about 30 mins
- bake near the top of a pre-heated oven, gas mark 6, 400°F, 200°C for about 45 minutes
- glaze the cooked loaf with a syrup made from 2 more tsp sugar and 3 tsp boiling water
Lois Elsden 