Last week, I felt a sudden craving for some Bara Brith - which, being Welsh, is somewhat difficult to find in East Yorkshire.
I reluctantly conceded that I would have to make it myself. This required shopping; since I cook so infrequently, I have very few ingredients in stock. So off I went to Lidl.
Now, I quite like a browse in Lidl (other supermarkets are also available). But this time I had specific items in mind, which proved a bit of a challenge. Obviously I already had tea and, surprisingly, eggs; flour was easy enough to find. They had a good range of sugar which, I must admit, flustered me a little, since I hadn't written down exactly which kind the recipe wanted. I knew I didn't want much, but all the packets were 1 kg, so that was no help. After a bit of dithering, and moving my trolley twice to accommodate other shoppers, I settled for soft dark brown, on the basis that I knew the cake was intended to be dark brown. Now, however (spoiler alert!) I am left with nearly a kilo of sugar that I don't know what to do with, apart from shove it in the back of the cupboard until it goes hard. Rather like the previous pack that I found when I tried to make room for it.
The real challenge, however, was mixed fruit. I was disappointed to discover that the only choice available was between a small pack of luxury, brandy-infused exotic stuff, and 500g of standard mixed fruit with candied peel. I like candied peel very much, but not in Bara Brith. However, I only needed 400g of fruit and, after peering at the label for a few minutes I discovered that the peel only comprised 15% of the contents. That's... a bit less than 100g, so I decided to spend a sticky half an hour picking it all out. Now I have a bowl of candied peel, which I could: a) snarf up while watching TV; b) cover with melted chocolate, and then snarf up while watching TV; c) bake a lemon cake while I'm on a roll, and put it in that; d) shove it in the back of the cupboard and forget about it. So far I have just left it on the kitchen counter, since there is no room in the cupboard.
Anyway, on with the baking! I have to say that it's the easiest cake I've ever made, even if the mixture was worryingly stiff. But it appeared to cook ok, and looked alright when I turned it out to cool. But then I re-read the recipe (goodness knows why) and saw that I had to leave it wrapped up for 2 days before eating! I managed 24 hours before having a slice, and it was lovely, but I have to say it has continued to improve on a daily basis. I had wanted lemon curd to put on it, and was sad to find that the closest Lidl had was apricot spread - although that's actually very nice.
So all in all it was a successful outcome, but did take some time:
Finding a recipe: 15 minutes
Shopping: one hour
Picking out the peel: half an hour
Mixing: 15 minutes
Baking: one hour
Cooling: two hours
That's five hours. I could have driven to Wales in that time, stayed overnight and then driven back with a shop-bought Bara Brith (or two) before my own was ready to eat. And I probably could have found some lemon curd as well.
