Beautiful Affair

300g coarse wholemeal flour

300g plain white flour

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

2 tsp brown sugar

100g soft margarine or butter

1 egg

450ml buttermilk

Butter, to grease

1 Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6.

2 Sieve the white flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and sugar into a bowl containing the brown flour, and mix gently.

3 Rub in the margarine or butter with your thumb and forefinger to crumb stage.

4 Beat the egg into the milk. Make a well in the dry mixture and pour in the milk. Bring it all together. It should be a wet mixture.

5 Butter an old frying pan (if you have one) or a 1lb loaf tin and pour in the mix.

6 With a knife cut across and down the centre of the loaf, and bake in the oven for 1 hour.

7 Remove the bread from the oven, turn it in the pan, then cover with a damp tea towel for one hour before serving.

My mother’s spot of dick

Makes one loaf

Mum sometimes omitted the treacle and used a mix of brown and white flour. She preferred the large golden raisins. This recipe is open to any fruit, but the harder dried fruits will benefit from a little soaking before use.

Butter, to grease

500g plain white flour

2 tsp baking powder

A pinch of nutmeg

1 tsp salt

200g coarse brown flour

100g soft margarine

1 tbsp treacle (optional)

1 egg, beaten

400ml buttermilk

150g raisins or sultanas

1 Preheat the oven to 160ºC/140ºC fan/gas 3.

2 Butter a heavy oven-safe skillet or loaf tin and line it with baking parchment.

3 Sieve the white flour, baking powder, nutmeg and salt into a bowl. Add the brown flour and mix gently.

4 Rub in the soft margarine to crumb stage.

5 Add the treacle, if using, and mix with a spatula or wooden spoon.

6 Add the egg, buttermilk and dried fruit. Mix gently and transfer to the prepared skillet or tin.

7 Bake for 1 hour, then remove from the tin, turn it upside down on a wire rack and cover with a damp cloth.

MUM AND HER ORANGE BIRTHDAY CAKE

January is when the Seville oranges come in, with many households creating their own distinct marmalades. My aunt Peggy’s won hands down in our family, and she often added some lime to her marmalade. For many years my mum celebrated her birthday on 5 January, until the year she got her first passport for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to America to celebrate my brother Kieran’s marriage to Mayo woman Pat Baines. Up to that point she had never needed her birth certificate, so when it arrived in the post, she was shocked to discover that she was in fact born on 6 January. I think we had two celebrations that year, and we’re all still a little confused when the date comes around.

For one of her birthdays, I made a three-tier orange cake, complete with orange butter icing and strips of sweetened orange zest scattered over the top. I insisted on icing it at home in Dublin before a three-hour journey to Clare. I placed the cake in a tall, sturdy-looking box, wedged into the back seat of the car with my bag and a denim jacket. When I arrived in Ennis I glanced over my shoulder to see the cake box keeled over, and melted icing drifting slowly like lava onto the seat and all over my lovely denim jacket. Mercifully, my sister Jean arrived with the repair kit and we somehow managed to rebuild and camouflage the damage just in time.

Flourless orange cake

Makes one 26cm cake

200g caster sugar

100g brown sugar

6 medium free-range eggs

2 oranges, boiled for 1 hour until soft (save the cooking water, quarter and remove pips, do not peel!)

250g ground almonds

1½ tsp baking powder

For the syrup:

150g caster sugar