BM# 75: A-Z Bake Around the World: Day 20
Bake of the Day: T for Tea Brack
Country: Ireland
We are starting the last week of our month long mega marathon and today we are baking a dish with the letter T. I have a delicious fruit cake called Tea Brack from Ireland. Mir recently posted the recipe for Irish Barmbrack, which looked amazing and here’s another version of the same bread. 
Barmbrack is a traditional Irish sweetened bread that is very similar to Welsh bara brith. It is also known as Irish Speckled loaf because the bread is dotted with raisins and other dried fruit. The dry fruit are soaked in tea and then used in the bread which gives the bread a nice tea flavor in the background.
Traditionally when this barmbrack was baked for Halloween, they would a pea, a stick, a piece of cloth, a coin and a ring to the bread. Each item had a special significance to the person who discovered it in their slice of bread. The person who gets the pea wouldn’t marry that year; the stick meant an unhappy marriage; the cloth indicated poverty and the coin riches; while the person who found the ring would wed within the year.
I used the recipe from King Arthur flour. This recipe only required the fruit to be soaked in hot tea for 1 hour. I used Earl grey tea, but Irish breakfasttea is a good choice. 2 tablespoons of Irish whiskey can be substituted for an equal amount of tea in the recipe.
This fruit bread is dense, packed with fruit but still moist and delicious. It is entirely made with whole wheat flour, which I love. There is no added fat in the recipe. It is great to eat with some soft butter. Bread keeps well at room temperature for up to 10 days.
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 75.
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Tea Brack
Ingredients
- 1 cup Hot Brewed Tea
- 1 cup Raisins
- ½ cup Currants
- 1 cup Prunes, pitted and chopped into small pieces
- 1 cup Dates, pitted and chopped
- 1 cup Brown Sugar, firmly packed
- 2 cups Wholewheat flour
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tbsp Egg replacer whisked in 3tbsp water (or 1 large egg)
- 2½ tbsp Coarse Sparking White Sugar
Instructions
- Combine all the dry fruit in a bowl. Pour the hot tea over the fruit and set aside to cool to lukewarm for about 1 hour.
- Preheat the oven to 325°F. Lightly grease a 8" round cake pan.
- In a mixing bow, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder and salt.
- Add the dried fruit and any remaining liquid. Stir everything thoroughly until combined. This is a thick and stiff batter.
- Add the egg replacer mixture and mix everything thoroughly.
- Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and sprinkle the top evenly with the coarse sparkling sugar.
- Bake the bread for 60~70 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Remove from the oven and turn it out onto a wire rack to cool.
Vaishali Sabnani
wow..I am loving this version with the sparkling sugar..the sugar looks beautiful and the cake..well it is a version of bara birth and since I have tasted it I can vouch for the flavor.extra ordinary.
Sowmya
This one looks fabulous….me have to grab a slice 😋
Priya Suresh
Tea Brack rocks, with loads of dry fruits. I can imagine having this excellent tea brack with some butter. Fantastic find.
Srividhya
Never used Tea in baking. The brack sounds super healthy with dry fruits and wheat flour. Great share Pavani.
Harini
Very interesting with fruits soaked in tea. Love the dense cake with ww flour.
Srivalli
What an amazing texture your cake’s got Pavani, will surely bookmark this..so wonderful to know this is completely whole wheat..makes it so healthy as well..
SAPNA
The whole wheat cake is loaded with rich and tempting flavors. Bookmarked to try soon.
ruchi indu
Lovely cake and a nice different name. feels like breakfast + snack = brack
Sharmila - The Happie Friends potpourri Corner
Awesome bake.. So love the crust and flavor of the cake!!
Sandhya Ramakrishnan
Love whole wheat bakes and this has such a great texture. I can’t wait to try this sometime soon. Love dense fruit cakes with my evening coffee.