Irish Soda Bread with Cranberries and Almonds

I adapted this recipe for Irish Soda Bread from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. Hers had raisins and caraway seeds in it.  I didn't have either in my pantry, but I did have dried cranberries and almonds. According to chef Rory O'Connell on Epicurious.com, the original soda breads were made with either whole-meal flour or white flour. However, the addition of sweeteners and dried fruit is recent.  Soda bread is patted into a round and baked. The round shape is traditional, and it comes from being cooked originally in a cast-iron pot, since many homes did not have ovens in the early 1800s. Irish Soda Bread is actually a quick bread and not a yeast bread.  In the picture above,  the dough is prepped for baking on a parchment lined baking sheet.

The dough should be handled as little as possible. When I combined the wet and dry ingredients, the dough came together in a gooey sticky mass. I patted it into an 8 inch round. I scraped it off the sides of the mixing bowl and gently placed it on the parchment lined baking sheet. I slashed the loaf and studded the top with toasted sliced almonds. I forgot the egg wash.

This is the finished height and color after baking.  It looks kind of hairy! It looks kind of dry too.

The texture was just like my banana tea bread, and it wasn't too sweet. The ends were dry but the slices in the center were not. I guess I could live with that. The slices were long and narrow like a slice of biscotti. In fact, that's what it reminded me of. To make the bread have more height, I'd pat the dough into a smaller, higher round. And for variation in taste, color, and texture, I'm going to use pistachios instead of almonds with the dried cranberries. Andy pronounced this one a keeper.

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The Past and the Present and the Tarte Tatin

Though this is the first time I'd ever baked the tarte, it had the familiar ingredients of a pie:  filling,  sauce, and crust.  A cross between a pie and a tart, this single crust pie is not as difficult to make as it seems. French names always connote gourmet rather than gourmand; this recipe will make your mouth water!  Making the pâte brisée in the food processor was not so new, because I'd made skillet pizza dough in it last week. It made making a pie crust less daunting, saving time and energy, besides.

We took the warm tarte and vanilla ice cream over to Robert and Anne's house for dessert.  We are all fella foodies and Anne is an exceptional cook. She made tom yum soup, chicken larb garnished with mint leaves, massaman curry (her mom made it, actually), shrimp in spicy paste, and mackerel steaks smothered with a spinach-like vegetable, sliced shiitake mushrooms, and slivers of chile pepper. Delicious. For dessert we had two; the tarte and Anne's red beans in syrup served over crushed ice.

It's a strange dessert to me because I'm used to eating red beans with rice as a meal, but to Andy, it brought back memories of coming home from school and having it as a snack. Food can have such strong associations. The tarte reminds me of Wisconsin apples--eating crisp fall apples out of hand, and baking apple pie and apple tart with the bounty.  Khru Ning gave us six Fuji apples for Chinese New Year. Two and a half of them went into this tarte.

Here is the Tarte Tatin from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. It's certainly good tasting, fun to make, and really quite easy.

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