It’s March & that means it’s time to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!
Believe it or not, I haven’t celebrated St.Patrick’s Day in quite some time now. We used to go out to dinner as a family when I was younger, but honestly there are less & less Irish restaurants around. Then as I got older, I went to all the parades & out to the bars to celebrate. But it’s like amateur hour, I can no longer tolerate wasted twenty year olds at 4:00 pm. Omg I sound so old!
So my favorite way to celebrate the holiday is to make Irish soda bread. My mom made this all the time growing up & I looked forward to it every year. She got this recipe from Margaret, the owner of the daycare center we went to when we were younger. Margaret was born & raised in Ireland so this recipe is the real deal!
The traditional way to make this bread is with raisins or currants, but I HATE raisins. My mom makes it with chocolate chips so it’s more of a dessert bread. I would say our version of this classic bread is more cake like than a true bread. If you don’t like caraway seeds, you can certainly eliminate them from the recipe but I think it just adds so much flavor!
- 3 cups flour
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 tbsp. Baking powder
- 1 tsp. Salt
- ½ tsp. Baking soda
- 1 cup chocolate chips (or raisins)
- 1 tbsp. Caraway seeds
- 1½ cups buttermilk
- 1 egg beaten
- 4 tbsp. Melted butter
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 2 quart round casserole dish.
- Mix dry ingredients together in a large size bowl (including caraway seeds).
- Add chocolate chips into the dry ingredient mixture.
- Combine melted butter & buttermilk in a medium size bowl. Beat egg then add to the buttermilk mixture.
- Pour buttermilk mixture into dry ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon until just combined. The dough will be on the sticky side.
- Pour dough into the casserole dish and spread dough out evenly in the dish.
- Bake for 1 hour or until top of the bread is browned.
- Leave in dish until cool.
