Bring back the Barmbrack!

Does anyone remember Barmbrack!!?

For those of you who don’t know what it is and find yourself in a rare situation where you have the opportunity to eat it, you better read this first or you’ll be at risk of choking to death. 

It is a kind of a light traditional Irish Fruitcake that used to make an appearance around Hallowe’en when I was a young wan. 

Haven’t seen it around since…

Anyway, it’s a nice tasting cake, nice and light, I normally don’t like fruity loafs but I really like Barmbrack.  It’s even nicer with a thick layer of butter on top and a cuppa cha on the side. 

Once you bite into it and start enjoying it, you’ll soon be picking at the contents in your mouth, the reason being that you will find all sorts of random objects in the cake.  Rings and sticks and hard peas and pieces of clothes…

Each object has a meaning and foretells your future…

If you find the pea in your slice - you’ll never get married…
The stick – you’d be beaten by your husband or if you were a man, you’d beat the wife.  This was an ever so subtle way of saying you were going to have an unhappy married life.
The piece of cloth – you’d be skint
The coin – you’d be rich.
The ring meant you would get married that year.

I remember one time, I was eating it and unknownst to myself, the stick was in the particular bit of cake I was chewing.  Whatever way I chewed it anyway, it made the stick go vertical and it slotted into one of the nukes and crannies in my bottom back tooth.  When the top teeth came down from above in the midst of the chewing, it shafted the stick further into my tooth and I’ll never forget the pain it caused me.  I had to yank the stick out from my tooth which caused it to bleed and it kind of put spinters into my gum.  I couldn’t chew on that side of my mouth for about a month after…

You’d never get away with having such a cake on the market these days…

Bring back the Barmbrack!