Another tea-time treat

When I was a child chain-letters were very popular but having had the process explained to me I never had anything to do with them except for once when my mother was the recipient of a recipe chain-letter. We decided that you couldn’t go far wrong with that and took a chance. In the event I think that we only gained two recipes out of it but they were both very good recipes that I and my mother used for years.

This is one of them.

It was titled “Bara Brith”. Now ‘bara brith’ is Welsh for ‘speckled bread’ and although you might think that that means yeast my researches have revealed that there are many many recipes and although some use yeast and some, especially from North Wales, involve soaking the dried fruit in tea, there is in fact almost as many recipes as people.

However that maybe it is a very easy tasty cake that keeps well.

The recipe said to make it in a 10″ x 6″ tin (25 x 15 cm for those who think in metric). I think that my tin is slightly larger but any tin with about this surface area will do.

I start by lining the tin with greased greaseproof paper.

The recipe as most of my recipes is in imperial measurements but I have given a usable metric equivalent.

I then take

8oz (225g) self-raising flour and

4oz (110g) of margarine or butter and rub the fat into the flour in the normal way.

To this I add

4oz (110g) of caster sugar and

6oz (170g) mixed dried fruit.

Mix well.

You then add in the other ingredients. This time I mixed them together first but it isn’t necessary to do it this way.

This is

2 eggs

3 tablespoons of milk

1 desertspoon of golden syrup

1 desertspoon of marmalade

I think it is the marmalade that creates the especially yummy flavour.

Mix together well and spread in tin.

The original recipe said 1 hour at 325 deg F.

I use a fan oven and I find that at 140-150 deg C it only takes about 40 -50 minutes.

When cooked it should look like this and spring back when you touch it.

Remove from the tin after a couple of minutes and leave to cool on a rack.

Cut in pieces as you wish.

I cut mine in rectangles but you could cut it in squares if you prefer.