Irish So-Duh bread & Cinnamoan Cookies.

My apologies for being absent over the last couple of days, it's been a busy time for me but don't worry and don't lose faith, I'm still baking and getting through the recipes as planned! Yesterday was my last day at uni for this year so was a mixture of emotions (largely celebratory) and resulted in a mad dash to finish assignments - one such assignment was written ferocity in one sitting... on the loo - and of course cramming for my final exam. So naturally blogging about my various baking adventures dropped to the bottom of my list of priorities; no matter how much it hurt to do it!
But baking has been consistent, starting with the Irish Soda Bread I made on Wednesday evening. Soda bread is probably the best thing ever. Why? Because baking bread is pretty fun, kneading is therapeutic and the end result makes the house smell wonderful. But with normal bread, as opposed to Soda bread, there is a lot of waiting around for the yeast to start working ("Proving") here there was no such annoyance, a bit of bicarb and some buttermilk ( no, I'd never heard of that before either in case you wondered!) and it went straight in and then out the oven all in under an hour!
The Result: 

Mmmm, easy....

What came out of the oven was a very unusual type of bread. The butter cream clearly plays a massive part in making it taste so different, it is creamier and richer tasting than the average loaf of bread. Great with a bit of cheese or butter (if you don't mind injecting your arteries with kilos of fat...), and certainly a good loaf to try as a first attempt at baking bread. (It's literally just mixing 450g of flour with 300ml of butter milk and teaspoon of salt and bicarb and kneading it into a round shape, then cooking for 25-30 mins at 220c!).

Today's adventure was a bit of a haphazard one. I had originally intended to catch a train this morning to leave uni but as a result of way too much "celebrating the end of year" (which here roughly translates as alcohol!) I missed my train. Frustration doesn't even cover it. Nor did it help that I had an enormous headache to remind me of the reason I'd missed it...

But - for some reason - I found solace in the fact that I now had time to bake before I left! Not the most normal form of hangover cure but the cinnamon scented chocolate cookies certainly helped distract me and I always find that doing something is the best way to cure a hangover, so why not!

These tasty little ideas came out a bit disappointingly actually, perhaps it was my tastebuds being numbed by ehanol but they didn't seem to be as exciting as I had hoped. And they were definitely a little (a lot) too crumbly. They didn't have the "cookie" texture I'd hoped for, that beautiful doughy property the best cookies have. 

But I can hardly complain too much, I barely had any myself and everyone else seemed to really enjoy them! As someone cleverer than myself (not hard) once said "You are your best critic."

More exciting adventures to come tomorrow!

Mmmmm, Ingenious homemade cooling rack...