Gluten-Free Cinnamon Irish Soda Bread #Recipe by @LibbyKlein #St.Patrick'sDay

Libby Klein Irish Soda Bread is on the the easiest breads to make in my opinion. Due primarily to the fact that all the rise happens in the bake. I've made this a few times before with the traditional recipe - changing it to gluten-free of course. But this is the first time I've added cranberries and cinnamon. I think they work beautifully with the recipe and I hope you will too. It's also a bit weird to bake the soda bread in a glass bowl, but it is the perfect vessel to get that traditional round loaf. It's important to use a probe thermometer to make sure the inside is fully baked before you remove the loaf from the oven. Go by temperature here over time. I have taken it out too early more time than I care to admit. If you don't have a thermometer, try testing the loaf by inserting a butter knife and seeing if it comes out clean. 

Are you a fan of Irish Soda bread? Or have you never tried it? And have you tried it with cinnamon? Leave me a note in the comments and let me know.

Gluten-Free Cinnamon Irish Soda Bread

Yield: 1round loaf

Ingredients:

¾ cup+ 2 Tbs. buttermilk -or- milk with 1 Tbs. apple cider vinegar added

2 cup Gluten Free Flour blend with xanthan gum included

¼ cup sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp. salt

3 Tbs. butter

1 tsp. baking soda (which goes in the milk before adding to the bread)

1 egg

1 ¼ cup seedless raisins and or cranberries

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375° F.

If not using buttermilk (I never have buttermilk, so I always use the milk/vinegar trick) mix milk with 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar. Set aside to curdle. It happens very fast.

In a food processor - or by hand, blend together gluten free flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles a pebbly, course meal. I went old school this time and used the two knives.

  

Add baking soda to milk mixture (weird, right?) whisk to combine, then add to the flour with the egg. Pulse (or mix with a spatula) until a ball of dough forms. Remove from the food processor and fold in raisins and cranberries.

Scoop dough onto a floured counter and roll into ball then transfer to a lightly oiled and floured 7-inch heat proof glass bowl or small cake pan. Make a shallow X in the top of the loaf with a large knife.

Bake for 35 minutes at 375° F., then drop the temperature to 325° F., (so it doesn't get too brown) and bake until the internal temperature reaches 200° F. It took my loaf another 40 minutes to get there. I like to use a probe thermometer that stays in the loaf and alerts me to when temperature has been reached. Let it cool completely before you try to cut into the loaf.

Are you a fan of Irish Soda bread? Or have you never tried it? And have you tried it with cinnamon? Leave me a note in the comments and let me know.

Gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister and her aunt Ginny are looking forward to a quiet, homey Christmas at their B&B in Cape May, but unfortunately, death isn’t taking a holiday this year . . .

Ever since Thanksgiving, Poppy and her pals have been left with an unsolved mystery of the romantic kind. But at least this mystery isn’t the kind that involves murder. That all changes when the body of a fish supplier is discovered in the kitchen of her ex’s restaurant—and he’s frozen, not fresh.

For once, it’s not Poppy who tripped over the corpse, yet she can’t escape being drawn in since the victim has a note taped to him reading Get Poppy. Figures—an engagement ring isn't labeled, but the dead guy is addressed to her. Now, while Aunt Ginny plans a tree-trimming party and pressures Poppy to decode a mysterious old diary, the amateur sleuth is asked to “unofficially” go undercover at the restaurant to help the police. Until then, the only crime Poppy had been dealing with was Figaro’s repeated thefts of bird ornaments from the tree; now it looks like it’s going to be a murder-y Christmas after all.

 

Libby Klein grew up in Cape May, NJ where she attended high school in the '80s. Her

classes revolved mostly around the Culinary sciences and Drama, with one brilliant semester in Poly-Sci that may have been an accident. She loves to drink coffee, bake gluten-free goodies, collect fluffy cats, and translate sarcasm for people who are too serious. She writes from her Northern Virginia office where she serves a very naughty black smoke Persian named Sir Figaro Newton. You can keep up with her shenanigans by signing up for her Mischief and Mayhem Newsletter on her website. www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/

Guest Barbara Ross with Vee's Irish Soda Bread #giveaway

MADDIE DAY: I'm delighted to welcome my friend and Wicked Authors blogmate Barbara Ross to the Kitchen today! She has a yummy recipe from her recently released Irish novella in her uber-popular Maine Clambake Mysteries, and she's giving away a copy of the three-novella collection, Irish Coffee Murder. Take it away, Barb.

VEE’S IRISH SODA BREAD and a Giveaway

Thanks Mystery Lovers Kitchen for having me, and thank you Edith/Maddie for hosting. I’m giving away a copy of Irish Coffee Murder to one lucky commenter.

I was thrilled when my publisher, Kensington, asked me to write a novella for the Saint Patrick’s Day collection, Irish Coffee Murder, which also includes stories by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis. The three of us have participated in four previous collections and my novellas are always third, so I knew there would be a recipe for Irish coffee in the book before most readers got to my contribution. (Especially since Lee Hollis’s series is the Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery series.) Luckily, I had an appropriate recipe up my sleeve, Marie Kent’s Irish soda bread.

In “Perked Up,” my story in Irish Coffee Murder, I gave the task of making the Irish soda bread to Maine Clambake series regular Vee Snugg. In the real world, the recipe comes from Marie Kent, my husband’s sister’s husband’s late mother (got it?). Though it sounds like a distant relationship, Marie and I attended holiday gatherings, weddings, showers, graduation parties, and funerals together for years, outliers in my husband’s huge Italian-American family. Marie was fiercely proud of her Irish heritage and never understood how she ended up in a family that drank gallons of coffee instead of tea. She is greatly missed.

Ingredients

3 1/3 cups flour

6 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup sugar

½ cup butter, softened

2 eggs, slightly beaten

¾ cup milk

1 cup raisins

Oil for greasing pan

 

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.

Work in butter with your hands until the mixture has the consistency of cornmeal.

Add raisins.

Whisk eggs and milk together, stir into dry mixture to blend.

 

Knead for two minutes.

Pat into a lightly oiled 9-inch cake pan.

Bake approximately one hour until crust is golden and toothpick comes out clean. Makes one loaf.

 

Enjoy! Don’t forget to comment (including your email address so we can reach you) for a chance to win a hardcover copy of Irish Coffee Murder.

About Irish Coffee Murder

You don’t need to be Irish to enjoy St. Patrick’s Day in Maine, where the chilly March weather offers the perfect excuse to curl up with an Irish coffee…But in these St. Patty’s-themed novellas by fan-favorite cozy mystery authors Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross, someone may have spiked this year’s brew with murder!

Buy Links

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Your Independent Bookstore

 

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Barbara’s Maine Clambake novellas are included along with stories by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis in holiday anthologies from Kensington Publishing. She also writes the Jane Darrowfield Mysteries. Barbara and her husband live in Portland, Maine. Visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com

 

 

 

Cheese and Sour Cream Scones @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Happy St. Patrick's Day! This remains my all-time favorite photo of St. Patty's day in Key West. Posing in front was our beloved and gorgeous Tonka--the girls behind him insisted on having him in a photo. Luckily our friend Jerry Touger was there to capture the moment.

All that aside, I should be offering you something quintessentially Irish today, right? I am making corned beef and cabbage, but since it's in the crockpot and not photo-ready, I will share it next time. (Who says it can only be eaten on March 17??) If yours is likewise bubbling on the stove, these cheese and sour cream scones might go nicely with the dinner.

This recipe is probably more Scottish than Irish, but it does have flecks of green in it. If you're making a pot of soup or chili and want something a little special to go with, these scones fit the bill, too. I always choose a sharp cheddar for cheese scones but you could use whatever you have, or even mix and match. If you have a pot of chives in your kitchen window, feel free to swap out the scallions. You could use Irish Kerrygold butter and cheese, and feel good and Irish about the whole thing!

Ingredients:

2 cups unbleached All-Purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder 

1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese, plus 1/4 cup more for the tops

1/2 teaspoon salt

3-4 chopped scallions 

8 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, 1 stick

2 large eggs (1 separated, white reserved for glaze)

1/2 cup sour cream

1-3 teaspoons of sharp mustard, to taste

A few shakes of hot sauce, like Tabasco

Mix the dry ingredients together. Cut the butter into the dry mixture using a pastry cutter. The butter wants to be in pea-sized pieces, but try not to overwork the dough. Shred the cheese and chop the scallions and stir these into the butter-flour mixture. 

Whip together the egg plus yolk and the sour cream and mustard and hot sauce, and mix until the dough is moist. 

Pat the dough into a circle onto a floured surface-and then cut into wedges. Transfer to a parchment-covered baking sheet. Paint the saved egg white on the tops of the scones and sprinkle with shredded cheddar.

Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes or until the tops are brown. 

Serve piping hot with more butter if you like!

If scones don't feel quite right, you might like my recipe for Irish soda bread. And for dessert? An Irish lemon pie would be perfect. I'm making both of them to have alongside the corned beef and cabbage. Hmmm, and now I'm thinking that all of those recipes will make their way into Key West #13, now very much in progress...

About things in progress, UNSAFE HAVEN will be featured on First Chapter Fun next Thursday March 24. You can follow the fun either in their Facebook Group and or on Instagram @firstchapterfun. 

If you read on a Kindle, both THE KEY LIME CRIME and A DEADLY FEAST are on sale for $1.99 until 3/20...

Last but not least, A DISH TO DIE FOR, #12 in the Key West food critic mystery series, will be out on August 9, but is now available for preorder wherever books are sold!

About A Dish to Die For:

Peace and quiet are hard to find in bustling Key West, so Hayley Snow, food critic for Key Zest magazine, is taking the afternoon off for a tranquil lunch with a friend outside of town. As they are enjoying the wild beach and the lunch, she realizes that her husband Nathan’s dog, Ziggy, has disappeared. She follows his barking, to find him furiously digging at a shallow grave with a man’s body in it. Davis Jager, a local birdwatcher, identifies him as GG Garcia, a rabble-rousing Key West local and developer. Garcia was famous for over-development on the fragile Keys, womanizing, and refusing to follow city rules—so it’s no wonder he had a few enemies.

 When Davis is attacked in the parking lot of a local restaurant after talking to Hayley and her dear friend, the octogenarian Miss Gloria, Hayley is slowly but surely drawn into the case. Hayley’s mother, Janet, has been hired to cater GG’s memorial service reception at the local Woman’s Club, using recipes from their vintage Key West cookbook—and Hayley and Miss Gloria sign on to work with her, hoping to cook up some clues by observing the mourners.

But the real clues appear when Hayley begins to study the old cookbook, as whispers of old secrets come to life, dragging the past into the present—with murderous results.

Irish Soda Bread, Take One @LucyBurdette

 

LUCY BURDETTE:  For some reason I had decided I was not a fan of Irish soda bread. Maybe I had a bad loaf somewhere, sort of like a bad clam? I can't exactly remember. However, a few months ago I went into my favorite Connecticut bakery’s pop-up event and noticed that their soda bread looked delicious. I bought a loaf and we gobbled the whole thing. This is my attempt to recreate it, using the website Sally's Baking Addiction as a starting point.  Next time I make this (and there will be a next time,) I would add another tablespoon of sugar and also a tablespoon or more of zested orange peel. I will also try substituting my uncle’s dried Michigan cherries for the raisins.

Ingredients

1 and 3/4 cups buttermilk or milk with added 1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 large egg 

4 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for your hands and the counter

3 Tablespoons granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

5 Tablespoons cold unsalted butter

1 cup raisins

1 teaspoon caraway seeds

I've gotten in the habit of not buying buttermilk, because I usually end up throwing half of it out. And it is higher in sodium than regular milk. If you want to use buttermilk, have at it. If you would like a substitute, squeeze half a lemon into a two-cup measuring cup and fill to the one and 3/4 cup mark with whole milk. Set that aside to come to room temperature. Whisk it together along with one egg.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a big bowl, the flour, the sugar, the baking soda, the salt, and the caraway seeds. Stir in the raisins.

Cut 5 tablespoons of very cold butter into the dry ingredients. The colder the butter, the lighter the batter. 

When the butter is pea sized, carefully fold in the egg and milk mixture. 

Move the batter to a floured surface (I used parchment paper with a little flour sprinkled on it.) Flour your hands and knead the dough briefly into a round. Again, shorter is better, even 30 seconds. 

Move the batter to a prepared greased pan. (This can be a pie plate, a cake pan, or cast iron skillet.) Those round pans help the bread keep its shape. Once in the pan, make a cross in the batter with a sharp knife.

Bake in a 400-degree oven for about 25 minutes. You can check the bread halfway through to see if the top is getting too brown. If so, cover with foil for the second half of the baking.

Let the loaf cool for ten minutes or more before you slice it. Serve warm with more butter and possibly raspberry jam, or for breakfast, maybe with peanut butter?

In addition to Lucy's Key West food critic mysteries, she's written a thriller called Unsafe Haven! Hardcover and audio will be out this week.

About Unsafe Haven: A chance meeting on the New York subway leads to the destinies of two very different women becoming intertwined with terrifying consequences in this nerve-jangling thriller.

Sixteen-year-old Addison is on the run. She's leaving her life on New York's streets behind for a new one with Rafe, armed with just his phone number on a scrap of paper. She's taking the subway to meet him in New Jersey. He'll take care of her. Or so she thinks . . .

Elizabeth Brown's world has fallen apart and she's thinking about her newly ex-fiancé. Until she locks eyes with a teenage girl while waiting for the train doors to open, and a bundle is thrust into her arms as she leaves the subway. A baby, wrapped in a dirty coat.

Elizabeth phones the number she finds in the coat pocket. Then wishes she hadn't. Someone wants Addison and the baby. And they'll do whatever it takes to get them . . .

In a major departure from her lighthearted Key West mysteries, Burdette invites readers into the world of a chilling thriller. (Unsafe Haven is) a page-turner highlighting the problem of exploited runaways.

—Kirkus Reviews

If you'd like a nibble before you buy, read the first chapter here. And if you'd like to read more about the genesis of the book, read this post from Jungle Red Writers.

Ways to buy your copy of UNSAFE HAVEN:

Book depository 

Indiebound 

Barnes and Noble 

Amazon 

Severn House 

And if this is not in your budget (which I totally get,) you can invite your local library to order a copy!

Guest Marian Stanley's Irish Soda Bread

Mystery Lovers' Kitchen is delighted to welcome author Marian Stanley with the perfect recipe for St. Patrick's Day!

VARIATIONS ON IRISH BREAD

I am partial to my mother’s Irish bread which is a cake-like white variety. My friend Jody often gifts us with a different one – a lovely Irish brown bread from her late husband Ed’s recipe. Our sister-in-law Kathleen makes a perfect traditional Irish soda bread but has no recipe for it. She just . . . does it. The very best part of the bread, says Kathleen, is the caila or the heel. I can’t find caila in the Gaelic dictionary. She doesn’t know how it should be spelled and why would that be important now, anyway? Perhaps it’s a County Louth term. In any case, Kathleen would be right – all that extra warm outer crust with sweet Irish butter is special.

Our friend Elaine brought a scrumptious soda bread over to our back door for Christmas too. The one we chose to share, however, is this one - called the Marilyn O’Reilly Soda Bread, by way of our daughter Katherine, who makes a delicious round. I couldn’t decide on which of these variations of Irish bread would be featured in my WIP, The Mariposa Circle, but I think it could be this one.

Served with a pot of Barry’s Irish tea – in the pot prepared beforehand with an extra rinse of hot water, sweet Irish butter and a good marmalade. I like Dundee.

IRISH SODA BREAD

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 tablespoons caraway seeds (optional)
1 cup raisins
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg


Directions:

Set rack in the middle level of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees.

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir to mix.

Add butter and cut/rub in until butter disappears into the dry ingredients.

Stir in raisins and, if chosen, caraway seeds.

In a small bowl, mix together the buttermilk and egg. Mix into the dough mixture with a rubber spatula.

Turn the dough onto a floured surface and fold over on itself several times to make a round loaf. Transfer to a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan covered with aluminum foil and cut a cross on the top. 

Bake for 15 minutes and then reduce heat to 350 degrees and cook for about 15 or 20 minutes more, Toothpick test center.

Cool on a rack and serve with butter and marmalade.

Like her protagonist Rosaria in The Immaculate, Marian McMahon Stanley enjoyed a long international corporate career with a Fortune 500 company and, more recently, a senior position at a large, urban university in Boston. She is the mother of four adult children and a growing number of grandchildren. Marian writes in a small, bookish, historical town west of Boston and on Cape Ann in Gloucester, the nation’s oldest seaport. She lives with her husband Bill and — just as in the story — a Westie named Archie.

Buried Troubles is Marian's most recent book, and she's hard at work on the next, The Mariposa Circle.

Find out more on her website

Marian is giving away a copy of Buried Troubles. Just leave a comment below (with your email address), and answer the question, "Have you ever made Irish bread?"

Thanksgiving Irish Cranberry Bread

Once again the American holiday of Thanksgiving rolls around and finds me out of the country, in Ireland. Having two very separate main branches to my family tree gets confusing: on my mother’s side, I can go back to the Mayflower, and one great-great-whatever managed the first grist mill in Plymouth; on my father’s side, it’s almost all dairy farmers in Cork and Carlow.

This year I’ve become the proud owner of a small Irish cottage in West Cork, in sight of where generations of my ancestors lived. It’s not ancient—probably built in the mid 20th century—but it still has a cast iron cook stove, which originally doubled as heating for the main sitting area. I’m guessing it’s still functional and it burns solid fuel: coal, wood, peat, and for all I know, household trash. Looking at it, I can understand why the Irish bake so much soda bread, both light and dark. I think it’s a safe bet that the temperature of the oven is a bit inconsistent, but soda bread is very forgiving. I’m looking forward to trying the oven out, after a good scrubbing.

Traditional Irish soda bread contains raisins or currants. As a nod to my American side, I’m swapping those for dried cranberries. After all, the corporate HQ of Ocean Spray is literally right down the road where I live, and I believe in buying local.



Cranberry Soda Bread

Ingredients:

1-1/2 cups dried cranberries
4 cups unbleached flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
6 Tblsp granulated sugar
6 Tblsp cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1-1/2 cups buttermilk
2 egg yolks
1 Tblsp Irish whiskey (optional, but this one comes from West Cork!))

2 Tblsp. crystallized sugar for sprinkling


Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Put the cranberries into a bowl and pour boiling water over them to soften for a few minutes. Drain.

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and 6 Tblsp. sugar.

Blend in the butter with pastry blender, a pair of knives, or your fingers, until pea-sized bits form.

In another bowl, whisk together buttermilk, egg yolks and whiskey if you’re using it (you could substitute vanilla extract if you like). Pour the liquids over the flour mixture and scatter the cranberries on top. With a wooden spoon, stir the mixture to form a moist dough. Knead the dough lightly in the bowl for 15 seconds.

On a lightly floured counter or board, divide the dough in half. Form each half into a rounded half-ball measuring 5-5 1/2 inches in diameter. 

Place each ball on the lined baking sheet, 5" apart. With a small sharp knife, slash the top with a cross. Sprinkle the top of each loaf with crystallized sugar.

Bake for 40 minutes or until the loaves are golden. Transfer to wire racks and let cool for 30 minutes. Serve with plenty of good Irish butter (try Kerrygold—I may have met some of the cows that contributed to that butter).

You Can Celebrate Thanksgiving Anywhere!

Coming in March 2017: Cruel Winter, the fifth book in the County Cork mystery series. There is a lot of new snow on the ground in West Cork, and an old crime to solve . . .

www.sheilaconnolly.com