Yorkshire Tea Loaf or Brack
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Yorkshire Tea Loaf is dark, rich, and sticky with great flavours of fruit and a hint of rum. It's somewhere between a fruit cake and a loaf. It is also known as Barm Brack, or just Brack. Delicious as a tea time treat, sliced and spread with butter, or with chunks of a good strong cheese like Wensleydale, or a mature Cheddar - the sweet and savoury combination is a marriage made in heaven!
Ingredients:
- 300g dried fruit - sultanas, currants and raisins
- 75g mixed peel, chopped
- 75g glacé cherries, halved
- 300ml hot, strong, black Yorkshire tea
- 200g soft, dark brown sugar
- 225g self raising flour
- 1 egg, beaten
- ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 tbsp black treacle
- 75ml dark rum or cognac
- 1 tsp mixed spice
Preparation:
- Place all the dried fruits in a large bowl, pour the tea over, stir well.
- After 15 minutes add the rum or cognac and stir well, then cover with cling film and leave overnight.
- Preheat the oven to 190°C /Fan 170°C.
- In a large bowl, pour in the fruit mixture and stir in the sugar and black treacle.
- Add the flour, mixed spice, baking powder, and egg and mix well you will get a fairly wet mixture.
- Grease a 1lb loaf tin, and put a sheet of baking paper into the tin, so that it covers the length of the base and side and overlaps each long side by a couple of inches. This will help you get the loaf out of the tin
- Pour the mixture into the tin and bake until cooked - about 60-90 minutes - until dark golden on top. A skewer inserted into the centre should come out clean.
- When cooked, allow to cool for a few minutes in the tin before turning out onto a wire rack.
- You can now glaze the cake if you wish, by brushing with a little honey dissolved in hot water.
- Leave on the rack to cool completely before eating.