Barn Braic
I haven't blogged yet about what we did at Halloween. It has been a busy week and I cant believe it is Thursday already!
A childhood tradition growing up in Ireland was to eat Barn Braic. There are many different spellings but essentially it is an Irish fruit bread/cake that was served at Halloween sliced up and spread with creamy salty yellow butter.
Traditionally there were some things wrapped in greaseproof paper and hidden in the cake. A ring, a pea, a stick, a coin and a piece of sack cloth. Each item had a meaning. Some were happy: the ring meant you would marry over the coming year, the coin was for wealth. Some were a bit unpleasant: the stick was that you would be in an unhappy marriage, the pea that you would be forever a spinster, the cloth that you would live a life of poverty.
I Google searched for a recipe and this one looked the easiest and least time consuming. I had to Google again to convert the weights into grams (that probably explains the sticky lumps on the family computers keyboard!) Overall I must say it was incredibly easy. It just took forever to cook.
We had friends joining us after Mass on Saturday night for dinner. Because their kids were younger than ours I thought I should be politically correct and modify the items going into the cake and invent new meanings for them! In the end we decided on the following...
Coin: You will be rich!
Almond: You will live a long and healthy life.
Stick: You will travel far and wide to exotic places
Star bead: You will be a famous superstar!
I also had premonitions of tired kids, up past their bedtimes crying if they failed to get a slice with a "thing" inside and so I made the kids Barn Braic muffins, one per child, each one guaranteed to have one item inside.
For those of you thinking kids these days are wrapped in cotton wool and shouldn't need to have everything enginered to make them happy, I know! I generally agree with you. I just figured it was my party and I could cry if I wanted to but I sure as hell didn't need 7 tired kids joining me!
YUM they look delicious.. and the spiders are for protein i gather?
Let me know when you want me over your place for morning tea :-)
Looks tasty.....and even thought I know the spiders aren't real, they are still creeping me out!! :)
I never really liked Brack, I just ate it to see if I got anything. Mind you, your brack looks delish not like the horrible dark-chistmas-cake-like ones we had!!