This was Tea Brack.
I haven't known Tea Brack, a traditional Irish fruit cake made with strong-brewed tea until J gave me King Arthur Flour's Irish-style flour this Christmas.
It's coarse wholemeal flour, and I didn't know what to do with it. I went to KAF's website and checked what recipes for the product were available. There were a few. One was Tea Brack.
It looked like fruit cake. Surprisingly I didn't see any fat (butter/oil) in the
ingredient list. Many reviews mentioned the cake was too sweet. I halved brown sugar. I skipped all prunes and dates since many other recipes of tea brack call for only raisins. I used 5 1/4 oz of dark and golden raisin mix and 2 1/2 oz of currants. I made strong tea with Assam tea leaves. Very strong! Then, as KAF's
blog suggested, I replaced two table spoon of tea with one of J's whisky collection - Japanese whisky
Taketsuru. Why not?
I also skipped sugar topping, and baked the cake in a loaf shape, which seemed like more traditional than round that KAF used. The cake was so easy to make.
Ta-da!
I expected the cake would be dense and dry because of lack of fat. I was wrong. It was light and moist as well as crumbly.
I learned the cake was traditionally eaten with butter. Ah-ha! Here fat joined the cake finally. Luckily we had European-style cultured butter. Real Good Butter. The sliced cake with butter was delightful. Even without butter, cake was lovely. Sweetness was just right. Dried fruits pumped up with tea and whisky lighten up the cake and brought wonderful flavors. I quickly have become a big fan of Tea Brack!
