The Bread Bible - Irish Soda Bread

My only experience of Irish Soda Bread was many years ago during my mother's 'ye olde English baking' phase (inspired by Jane Grigson's English Cookery as I remember). During this time my brothers and I enjoyed homemade muffins, crumpets, suet pudding, lardy cake and other olde gems, including the Irish soda bread. I remember the soda bread being pretty stodgy and possibly a bit dry (sorry Mum). 

This recipe for Irish Soda Bread from the Bread Bible bears little resemblance to the bread I remember. Rose has added sultanas and a small amount of sugar that make this bread more like a large dense scone. I love a dense carbohydrate, and if it's threaded with sultans and slathered with some butter, even more so. This was very easy to make and nice to eat. 

I didn't soak the sultanas in whisky since I didn't have any, plus I quite like my 'dead flies' a bit chewy rather than soft. I also undercooked it a smidgen and forgot to slash the top of the loaf before I put it in the oven but I was pretty happy with the result anyway.

I still have a few breads to make to catch up with the Bread Bible Bakers' schedule. Next up is the Basic Hearth Bread.

Irish Cream Scones, no lace

My name is Catherine and I am a Scone Bore. 

I have come to realise that, when it comes to the subject of scones, I find it almost impossible not to bore on about how I prefer scones to be. So, to try and spare you the worst I will just say that:

1. these are delicious and ultra-easy to make scones

2. sweet scones don't need raspberry butterscotch lace topping even if it is truly delicious

3. I might make the 'lace topping' to serve with plain (no sugar) scones and cream.

And that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

Well not completely all. There's the making of the scones to talk about.

These scones use all cream instead of butter so there's no rubbing the butter in. I threw it all into the bowl and mixed it with my trusty bone-handled knife which reminds me of my grandmother. It wasn't a very wet dough but came together nicely. 

I love raw scone dough. It's a shame to cook it really. 

Rose includes a tricky step where you press the dough into a round cake tin. This makes a perfect circle you can cut into triangles. It is a good idea but I just pressed my dough into a rough-ish circle.

As I mentioned, the recipe gives you the option of making a raspberry butterscotch lace topping for the scones. I feel the title may mislead the unwary baker. I had a picture in my mind of a scone with a lacy pattern of raspberry cooked into it. It turns out it's actually a (delicious sounding) sauce to drizzle on the finished scones. Maybe lace means drizzle in American English? Or maybe I have an overactive imagination? 

I thought about making the sauce (it would be lovely on ice-cream) but the whole attraction of scones for me is the maximum 20 minutes from getting out the bowl to putting scones on the baking rack. That and the raw dough.

Next week we're making Pizza Rustica. Yay!