Pepper Paints

Barm Brac and Pumpkins

Tonight was a night of tradition, My kids love our family rituals and our holiday traditions. We spread lots of newspaper on the kitchen floor and carved our pumpkins. We watched, “It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.” And we ate donuts and pumpkin seeds.

This year we included a couple of new things. We looked at our fingernail shapes, and the lines on our hands….

And we made Barm Brac-A cross between bread and cake, used in kitchen fortune telling! The coin symbolizes increased wealth over the next year. the bean, contentment, the thimble, a year of hard work and the pea, unhappiness in love.

The directions are as follows:

1 pack active dry yeast

1 1/2 cups plus 1 teaspoon lukewarm milk

1 1/4 cups plus 1 teaspoon sugar

4 cups flour

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon salt

1 stick butter cut into small pieces

2 eggs, beaten with a little bit of water

2 cups mix of golden raisins and currents

1/2 cup mixed candied fruit peel-lemon and oange

a coin, a thimble, a bean, and a pea

Glaze: 3 teaspoons powder sugar dissolved in 3 teaspoons boiling water

In a small bowl, cream yeast with 1 teasp milk and 1 teasp sugar until frothy

In another bowl, sift together flour, sugar, spices and salt. With your hands. rub in the butter. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour in the yeast, beaten egg and milk. Mix the ingredients well with wooden spoon for about 5 minutes until a good dough forms. Add the fruit and the peel and the pea, coin etc… Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and allow it to rise in a warm place until doubled in size-aprox 1 hr 15 mins, Knead again slightly and place in lightly greased cast iron skillet, cover and let rise again for 30 mins.

Place in 4oo degree oven and bake until goden brown-about 1 hour.

When done remove the pan and let cool on a wire rack. Glaze while warm.

I didn’t want to bake plastic stuff into the bread so I used a dime, a dry chick pea, a dry black bean, dry lima bean. Once baked it was really hard to find the beans!! Everyone dug through their pieces! But I found the dime!!! Yeah for me!

Tags: Barm, Brac, Charlie Brown, coin, fortune, holiday, Pie, Pumpkin