Irish Soda Bread with a Twist

With St. Patrick’s Day coming up this weekend I wanted to share my version of Irish Soda Bread. When I was younger, my aunt used to always make Irish soda bread and eventually my mom started to make it herself at home, but she changed up the recipe a bit. It’s essentially like a typical soda bread recipe, except instead of raisins or currants we use craisins and we also add in walnuts. Last year, we changed it even further by adding some dried apricots and it was such a good addition to an already delicious recipe.

For this recipe, I use:

3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup of sugar
1 Tbs. baking powder
1tps. baking soda
1/2 tps. salt
4 Tbs. unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 cup craisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 – 1 cup dried apricots cut into pieces

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in to a large bowl. Then, add the butter and rub it into the flour mixture until it disappears. Then, stir in the craisins, walnuts, and apricot. In a separate bowl, whisk buttermilk and egg. Add it to the flour mixture and mix it until the dough is formed.

Mix all the ingredients together and dump the dough in a mound on a floured surface. Shape the dough into a round loaf and mark it with an X to help it vent while it bakes.

Bake it at 400 degrees in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes and then reduce the heat to 350 and bake for additional 15-20 minutes until golden and it passes the toothpick test. Let it cool on a rack and then you can cut in to it and enjoy! I love eating a slice as a snack or for breakfast before work!