School is back and so are the lunch boxes.. this is another lunch box loaf to kick off the term – it ticks all the boxes….simple, quick, with only a few ingredients. I have been making this recipe since I was a child, as did my mum, as did my grandmother. Everyone should have a family recipe and I guess this is ours, not in the least bit gourmet but ours all the same….Family recipes are always more about the memories than actual food. My memory is getting home from school and eating this simple loaf still warm with butter…but to be honest, it tastes better cold the next day still with the butter! I particularly love the frugalness of this recipe – it is after all a wartime recipe. So just one egg, no milk, no butter, no fuss. The unique flavour comes from the malt and the treacle…
PS…. If you’d like to share your family recipes with me on this blog, please feel free to send them in [smackie2@optusnet.com.au] with a little about the story and memory it holds for you. I’ll make and photograph the recipe and share with all our readers!
A note about the two main [and rather old fashioned] ingredients, malt and treacle… Malt is packed with vitamin B so it is a good pick me up – great at morning tea time. This thick syrup is most often used by brewers to help fermentation but also by bakers for its flavour, colour and sweetness although it is much less sweet than golden syrup. Treacle is a dark rich, sweet and slightly bitter liquid, loved by bakers again for flavour and colour. It is made from the syrups that remain during the process of refining sugar. Treacle is produced when this syrup is boiled for a second time - pale sweet golden syrup is made from the first boil, the third boil produces the darkest richest of all: molasses. You could experiment with all of these syrups – be frugal and use what ever you have and see what happens! Just keep the same volume. Both can be found in the supermarket though the more expensive UK imports tend to have lots more flavour…
Nanna Clarke’s Malt and Treacle Bread
Ingredients for 2 loaves
- 1 pound plain flour [500g]
- 1/4 pound brown sugar [125g]
- 4 tablespoons liquid malt extract
- 3 tablespoons black treacle
- 1/4 pound sultanas [125g]
- 1 egg
- 1 cup water
Another note about the recipe… While I have been making and eating this loaf for more than 30 years [gasp] it never twice turns out the same. Always good but never the same. Mum says this is because Nanna never measured the ingredients she just scooped out the sugar, tipped the flour from the bag and spooned out the malt and treacle. So whilst this recipe has been tried and tested for much longer than most recipes, it still has something variable about it and mum and I find ourselves forever comparing results, searching for the very dark sticky loaves that Nanna could make. We’ve tried all different types & brands of treacle. Every so often they come out paler and drier – like the one I photographed here! Sometimes they cook quick, sometimes slow. It doesn’t make any sense but as I said earlier it is always good, no matter what. It also freezes very well sliced or whole. Bake it in small loaf tins – mine are too big so as you can see, the loaves are always a little flat.
Method:
Mix all your dry ingredients….
Add the wet ingredients….mix to combine
Spoon into two lined small loaf tins, and bake in a preheated slow oven – around 150-180 degrees for around 1hour or until a skewer comes out clean.
Remove from tins after cooling for 15mins and resist for a moment to cool….
then enjoy with butter, but leave some for tomorrow – remember it gets better
Ps I think this is the only recipe I have ever tried that doesnt cause fights over who is going to lick the bowl – perhaps because the sweetness doesn’t develop until it is cooked…..
Beautiful pics Sam – that tin of treacle is just so gorgeous!
Sam
already have one in the oven! & thankyou for explaining the difference between treacle & molasses