Barm Brack (Tea Bread)

This is a waste not want not recipe in that it unusually uses up any left over tea -

Ingredients

3/4 pint cold black tea
4 to 7 oz brown sugar
12 oz dried fruit
10 oz self raising flour
1 egg

Method

Collect up the dregs of your tea pot through the day and then put the fruit and the sugar to soak in the tea overnight.  In the morning add the flour and egg, mix together then bake in a moderate oven for approximately 1 hour 45 minutes.  As the recipe contains no fat, to serve spread with butter and serve with a cup of tea.

Its worth doubling up on this recipe to make approximately three loaves. One for in use, one for the tin and one for the freezer.

Now a slight detour on the tea bag theme

On the point of using up tea, my Uncle's second wife always seems to have had a knack of growing the most beautiful Fuschia's pelargoniums window boxes and had a courtyard of various different hanging planters of one description or another.  They used to run a bed a breakfast in the middle of nowhere in Lincolnshire and the areas where the guests could go were most beautifully displayed.  We thought that she must be paying pounds and pounds in special food for these lovely plants, but in essence all she was doing was putting the steeped tea bags into a container full of water and letting them steep further then every so many days or so was feeding them with the tea water;  they certainly seemed to thrive on this and also it was more than getting the best from the tea - its a method that I and my Mum have used ever since.  So come hanging basket season you know how to feed them.