Nigella’s Bara Brith

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Nigella

12 serving

5.0 11 ratings Review this recipe

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 50 mins

Serves: 12

I have a particular fondness for this dried-fruit tea bread. My late sister Thomasina lived and worked in Wales, and my first taste of bara brith came courtesy of her neighbour, Dai, more than 30 years ago. It’s extraordinarily simple to make: you steep dried fruits, mixed spice and treacly sugar in hot tea overnight, then the next day you stir in an egg and some flour and pop it in the oven. The only difficult thing is having to wait a couple of days before eating it – but to taste bara brith at its best, I would beg you to be patient. I spread slices generously with Welsh salted butter. It would be rude not to.

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Ingredients Method

Ingredients

2 strong black tea bags
50g currants
400g mixed dried fruit
100g dark muscovado sugar
2 tsp ground mixed spice
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 tsp unsalted butter, for the tin
250g self-raising flour
½ tsp fine salt
1 tbsp runny honey, for glazing the cake
1 generous serving of salted butter per slice, to serve (optional)

Method

Step 1

Make up some strong tea by pouring 300ml boiling water over the 2 tea bags and allowing to steep for 5 mins.

Step 2

Put the currants, dried fruit and sugar into a bowl big enough to take all the other ingredients later, and pour over the hot tea, squeezing the tea bags well to get all you can out of them. Add the mixed spice then stir gently and thoroughly to combine, and to help dissolve the sugar. Then leave overnight (or for at least 6 hrs) to steep. If your eggs live in the fridge, take one out now so it will be at room temperature when you come to use it tomorrow.

Step 3

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas 4 and line the bottom and butter the sides of a 900g/2lb loaf tin.

Step 4

Add the flour and salt to the steeped fruit in the bowl and stir to mix. When it’s all but mixed in, beat the egg in a cup or small jug, pour into your big bowl and mix again until all the pockets of flour have gone.

Step 5

Spoon and scrape the mixture into the buttered tin, smooth the surface, and bake for 40-50 mins, by which time it will be beginning to come away from the sides of the tin and the top will be firm and dark gold, and a skewer or knife poked into the cake will come out clean.

Step 6

Immediately place the tin on a cooling rack, then brush the honey all over the top of the hot cake, and leave to cool in the tin. Only once it’s completely cold, remove the cake from the tin, wrap with baking paper then foil and store in an airtight tin or cake-keeper and leave it there, if you can, for 2 days before serving. When the cake is ready to eat, cut into generous slices, spread each one thickly with butter, and savour the moment.