Barmbrack Cake

It's almost Halloween! So before you start dressing up and stocking candy I want to share one more recipe. It's another traditional Halloween recipe, but this time all the way from Ireland. And it's a fruitcake!! Can you resist fruitcakes? Because if you can: congratulations to you! But I seriously eat half this cake in one day. What am I saying? A few hours!

Now I went ahead and said this was a traditional Halloween recipe, but if we really wanted to be traditional than this would be a bread. Also, we'd have to stuff the cake or bread full with little trinkets. Like a ring, a coin, a pea, a stick and a piece of cloth. There are different explanations for those, but the first two seem to consistently represent wealth, luck and marriage. So stick to a ring and a coin just to be sure whoever gets something will at least be lucky! Then again, anyone eating a whiskey fruitcake should be considered lucky.

Barmbrack Cake
a 22cm/8-9inch loaf - adapted from DonalSkehan and EatsAmazing

200 ml strong (Earl Grey) tea
50 ml whiskey
250 grams dried fruits * 
225 grams flour
2 teaspoons baking powder 
100 grams sugar
1 teaspoon spices
1 egg
1-2 tablespoons milk

1. Leave the tea to cool down to room temperature. Add the whiskey and dried fruits, together with the tea, into a bowl. Cover and leave to soak. (Ideally this'd be overnight: it really makes a difference! If you're in a hurry soaking while you prepare the other ingredients works as well.)
2. Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and spices together.
3. Add all the other (wet) ingredients into the bowl. Stir until you have an even, slightly liquid, consistency. The batter should drop off the spoon easily, but not instantly. Depending on how long you leave the fruits to soak you may need more or less tea at this point.
4. Pour the batter into a greased or lined tin and bake in the oven for about 50 minutes on 175 degrees Celsius or 345 degrees Fahrenheit. The cake is done once the top is browned and dry and a skewer comes out clean.

* think currants, sultanas, (glacé) cherries and cranberries, but anything will do.

Soaking the dried fruits in the tea and whiskey really makes a difference. I know I said that in the recipe, but I'm saying it again. The taste of the tea and whiskey will be much more prominent in the barmbrack as they won't get lost in the mixture of ingredients, but instead are captured inside the fruits. For this method you might need a bit more tea (or just water to add - up to 50ml).

I never actually soaked fruits for a fruitcake overnight before, but this time I started preparing the cake and then realized I didn't have time to make it after all. So they sat on my counter top overnight anyway. The next day, after the cake was baked and cooled, I was amazed by the difference. As soon as I took a bite of one of the fruits I could almost literally taste the tea and whiskey. I'm really glad I learned this by accident because I never want to do it differently again!

Also I'm quite happy that a cake made with tea turned out fine. I've tried making an Early Grey Poundcake before and it was horrible. Have you guys tried making a tea-cake before?