North Riding Loaf

As a follow on from the Great Bloggers Bake Off those of us that were involved whilst the Great British Bake Off was on telly are continuing to bake and blogging about it. I'm very much playing catch up, but finally this last week have found time to use some gorgeous smelling mixed spices that I was sent by Steenbergs.

After having a look at the recipes on their website I was rather taken by their recipe for North Riding Loaf (which seems to have now been renamed on there as North Riding Bread). Now this isn't a bread in the true sense of the word, but more of a tea cake. What really attracted me (apart from having lived in the North Riding for a large chunk of my life) was the fact that it suggests eating it either covered in butter or with a slice of Wensleydale on it. I've always loved a slice of cheese on my Christmas cake so was intrigued to see what it was going to be like. Here's the recipe as I made it – slightly modified from the Steenbergs original one linked above.

Ingredients:

• 450g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp black treacle
• 280ml semi-skimmed milk
• 120g butter
• 50g demerara sugar
• 170g sultanas
• 170g currants
• 85g mixed peel
• 2 tsp mixed spice

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 190 degrees. Sift together the flour, salt, baking powder and mixed spice. In a separate bowl rub the butter into the sugar until it is like breadcrumbs. Combine this with the sifted dry ingredients. Then add the sultanas, currants and mixed peel. Mix the treacle into the milk and then combine with all the dry ingredients to make a soft dough.

I then put the dough into a large loaf tin which I had lined with baking parchment. I then baked this for about an hour and a quarter. For the last 25 minutes I found that I needed to place some more baking parchment over the top to stop it burning.

As for the final result – I thought it was delicious! I haven't got any Wensleydale in the house to try it with that yet, but certainly with butter on top it tastes lush! Perfect with a cuppa on a winter's afternoon to keep you going.

Disclaimer: I was sent a jar of Steenbergs Organic Mixed Spice which I used in this recipe.