Yorkshire Teabread

I have tried quite a number of teabreads over the years and I am always game for trying a new and different one. Teabread is a useful cake to have around - it keeps well and makes a good snack, being not too sweet. I always think it's especially good spread with a good layer of butter! This recipe came from one of the Waitrose recipe cards which caught my eye as I was doing some shopping recently. I like the fact that it even states on the recipe card that it was created to celebrate Yorkshire Day on the 1st August. I may be a little late, but better late than never.

I can't find the recipe on the Waitrose website at the moment, but will keep checking to see if it's there. The recipes I usually use involve making strong tea (Yorkshire tea would be perfect here!) and soaking the dried fruit overnight. This recipe specifies making the tea and then leaving the fruit for at least an hour. I actually left mine about six hours, because I was doing other things, so it had plenty of time to plump up. I increased the spice in the recipe slightly - 1/4tsp isn't much so my 1/4tsp was rather generous! I also couldn't locate my glace cherries (for a good reason... being that most of my kitchen was relocated to my living room and things were piled on top of each other!) so used dried cranberries instead.

Quite a small loaf - just a 1lb (450g) tin and quite shallow, but tasty nevertheless. The teabread curdled quite badly as I was making it and I really wondered how on earth it would turn out to be edible, but I needn't have worried. This was really delicious. There's a lot less fruit in it than the teabreads I usually make, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just different. The most noticeable and surprising thing about this cake was how soft it was - really, really tender and delicate. I guess the curdling didn't really matter at all then! Apologies for the particularly dark photographs - as part of moving everything in my kitchen out, my usual lightbox was out of action hence the more-than-usually rubbish photos!

I am entering this teabread into the Best of British challenge, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage, and organised by Karen and Fiona of London Unattached. Many thanks to them for organising this challenge, which is being sponsored by New World Appliances for the first six months.

And as it is T for Teabread, I am also entering it into Alphabakes. This month the host is Ros of The More than Occasional Baker, and her co-host is Caroline of Caroline Makes.