Irish Soda Bread with Guest Kav Rees

It's that time of year again...

I have Yankee Belle Regular, Kav Rees, here today to share a soda bread recipe just in time for St. Patrick's Day.

Nothing says Happy St. Patrick’s Day like Irish Soda Bread and it’s super easy to make. Prep time is about 10 minutes, baking time 40…within an hour you can be serving piping hot slices slathered with butter. Yum. But be prepared…soda bread doesn’t taste like yeast bread. It’s denser and saltier. You either love it or you hate it. I happen to LOVE it enough to make it all through the year. Maybe that’s the reason I haven’t conquered yeast bread yet. Soda bread is just so easy!

Why the cross on the top of the loaf?

Do you want the practical, superstitious or religious answer? Okay – I’ll give you all three:

Practical – it allows the heat to get through the thickest part of the bread so it cooks evenly

Superstitious – to let the devil out of the bread

Religious – symbolic blessing of the bread and giving thanks

Here’s the recipe – and stay tuned for a rare photo of yours truly – yes in the flesh. I believe it is the only image of me on the internet – a real Yankeebelle exclusive.

Irish Soda Bread

4 cups Flour (I used spelt, you can use all-purpose whole wheat or white or a mix)

1 ½ tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp butter

1 ½ cups buttermilk or sour milk

You can add raisins if you like --- as much as you like

Mix dry ingredients and cut in butter. Make a well and add milk as needed to make a soft dough. There’s a point where you have to dive in with your hands and smoosh the dough while it’s still yucky. J Just keep working it until it’s still a bit tacky. Lightly knead it for 2-3 minutes – just in your hands, don’t pummel it on a bread board. Too much handling will make the bread tough. Dough will be smooth but a wee bit sticky (it will still cling to your fingers but will pull away.) Form into a round loaf – cut a cross into the top. Place on a buttered cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 40ish minutes. LOL. Bread will brown on top and if you look into the cross part you can see if it’s cooked through. A tap on its bottom should sound hollow. Don’t overcook so start checking around 30 minutes. Nothing tougher than overdone soda bread.

Kav kissing the blarney stone

And yes – here it is – a picture of Kav kissing the blarney stone many, many years ago when she was still nimble enough to climb the stairs and lay down on the cold stone floor.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!

Dishing Up Vegetarian Style with Kav Rees

I'm thrilled to once again have our favorite Irish-turn-Canadian friend in the cafe. As most of you know, Kav is a vegetarian and gets a little squeamish when I talk about things like smoking brisket and serving up steak, so I've asked her to share one of her favorite vegetarian recipes with us. Who knows, some of us carnivores might even like it.

Take it away, Kav.

Ahem…can I have a drumroll, please? At the time of writing it’s…wait for it…snowing!!!! But before it started snowing my spring finally looked like this:

Yes, rather boring to all you tree blossoming, green grass growing and petal pushing flower people south of me. Believe me – up here, brown is good. It means the snow has finally melted away and now all those little dormant plants are going to get to bask in the sunlight and pretty soon they’re going to sprout buds and leaves and flowers…just as soon as this most recent snowfall stops.

Okay, now that I have that out of my system – on to the café talk. I’m playing at being brave and sharing another vegetarian recipe. I’m always shy sharing my penchant for vegetarian food. That goes back to my college days when ‘friends’ used to tease me about it and try to sneak meat into my food so they could say they got the vegetarian to eat meat. Not fond memories so I learned to keep my wildly controversial eating habits to myself. But times they are a changing and more and more people have been exposed to some type of vegetarian food and survived to tell the tale!

In fact we have this great magazine in Canada, Chatelaine, and they have fantastic recipes in each issue and always have a few really user friendly vegetarian alternatives in the mix. That’s where I got this recipe from: Chickpea and Sweet Potato Curry.

The ingredients:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced (3 if they’re smallish)
• 2 tbsp curry powder
• 1 tbsp minced ginger (I usually add more)
• ¼ tsp salt
• 2 smallish sweet potatoes chopped into ½ inch pieces
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 can chick peas, drained and rinsed

Sautee onion and garlic in oil. Add curry powder, ginger and salt. Cook 2 min.

Stir in sweet potatoes and canned tomatoes. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to med-low. Simmer about 15 min. 

Add in chickpeas and continue cooking until sweet potatoes are tender (10 min). 

Serve over basmati rice.

Or, you could probably add chicken to this recipe for a carnivorous one bowl meal. Or use it as a side dish with another type of meat. You can also play around with the seasonings if you’re an adventurous cook. I’m not, but my friend made it once and added some spices and it was fantastic only she can’t remember what she added now so I can’t tell you. I’ve also eaten leftovers cold, like a salad. Pretty versatile dish, eh?

I'd say so. Kav, this actually looks really good. Doubt my boys would go for it, but hubby and I would. 

And no need to be shy around us at the cafe. While we may not be vegetarians, we try to have open minds. Unlike those pesky college friends of yours. ;)

So what do you think, ladies? Does this sound yummy to you?

Kav's Gingerbread Cookies

Missy, here. And I'm thrilled to share a post today from Kav. Y'all give her a big Yankee-Belle welcome!

Soft Gingerbread Cookies

Kav Rees

So, I posted a picture of my biggest Christmas kitchen triumph on Facebook and Missy asked me to share it here. But first I thought I’d give you a gander at my wee little house that’s falling apart.

Luckily you can’t notice all its flaws in this picture thanks to my garden. That’s at the early stages. Blissful sigh. I love my garden. Now it’s just piles of snow.

And here’s my tiny little kitchen complete with floor tile counters! Talk about step-saving design. I didn’t have to move an inch in order to access everything I needed to create today’s confection…

 Drum roll please….soft and chewy gingerbread cookies. I know, y’all are probably rolling your eyes at the simplicity of it all. Who can’t make gingerbread? Me for one! No matter what recipe I tried it always came out way too crispy. In fact, some of my attempts could have been used for hockey pucks. Even my dogs wouldn’t risk their canines on them! So when my daughter requested gingerbread cookies for part of our Christmas baking line up I cringed and promptly made her research a recipe so I could blame her for the epic fail sure to come. Only sweet success!!!!!!

 Soft Not Snappish Gingerbread Cookies

Butter (1/2 cup)

Dark Brown Sugar (3/4 cup)

Molasses (1/3 cup)

Egg (1)

Flour (2& 2/3 cup)

Ground Ginger (2 tsp)

Baking Soda (1 tsp)

Salt (1/2 tsp)

Ground cinnamon (1/2 tsp)

Nutmeg (1/2 tsp)

Alspice (1/2 tsp)

Ignore the white sugar. It snuck in there when I wasn’t looking. Such a ham!

I didn’t take pictures of the process but you cream butter and sugar really well. Add in molasses and egg. Mix the dry ingredients separately and then mix gradually with the butter/molasses mixture. You’ll have to use your hands when you add the last of the flour mixture and then knead the dough for bit. It feels really dry at first, but keep at it and pretty soon you’ll have a nice smooth ball of gingerbread dough.

Divide into two balls and refrigerate for at least half an hour.

(Funny side note here. My daughter copied this recipe down and she’s notorious for leaving things out. This time it looks like she left out a water measurement in the ingredient list because as I was copying out the directions I noticed it said to add water. LOL. Oops, no idea how much, but I’ve made it twice now and haven’t missed the water. Wondering if that’s what makes these so soft and chewy instead of crisp? Who knows?)

On a lightly floured surface roll out dough – I left it thicker than I would for sugar cookies because I like my gingerbread soft not snappish. Cut out cookies, place 2 inches apart on a greased baking sheet (or just use parchment paper which is what I do). Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes. I undercook mine…so first couple of batches are 8 minutes but later ones are about 7 minutes because I’m all about the chew in my gingerbread.

I’m actually going to freeze these sweeties and decorate them closer to Valentine’s Day so the decorated pic at the top of this post is a picture of our Christmas cookies – decorated with a zip lock bag that had a hole cut out of a corner. Hoping to get a proper decorating set before I make these pretties into Valentine treats. I’ll pipe around them and add love scripture references in the centre. I used to do that when I taught Sunday School and made the students read the scripture before they could eat the cookie. Devious, eh?

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Kav is a mystery – even to herself which maybe explains why she is so fond of romantic suspense.  After a lifetime of writing as a leisure pursuit, she is now setting her sights towards publication.

A passionate reader of inspirational fiction, Kav devours books and then blogs about them on her review blog http://www.bestreads-kav.blogspot.ca where she is fond of hosting giveaways as well. She is also part of a ten woman blogging team over at http://inkspirationalmessages.com/  

You can also find Kav on Facebook.