A delicious and really simple sweet soda bread flavoured with marzipan, cherries and orange blossom water. 

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Firstly, I hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend, we spent lots of time relaxing with family which was absolutely lovely. I also spent far too much time browsing the internet for new cameras 🙂 it’s very possible I may snap one up quite soon (and I’m very excited about it 🙂 ). I’ve now got my fingers firmly crossed for some sunshine over the next couple of weeks so I can get the boys out and about during the school holidays (so far we’ve had plenty of rain so I’m not too optimistic!).

A few weeks ago the internet was choc-a-bloc full of recipes to celebrate St Patrick’s Day and quite predictably this meant lots of Irish soda bread recipes. It got me thinking that it’s been ages since I shared a new soda bread recipe and so I got to work creating a new flavour. I’ve been meaning to make something with marzipan and cherries for a while as it’s a firm favourite flavour combination in my household, and I had some orange blossom water leftover from making Maltese figolli biscuits so I threw some of that in too as I know how well it goes with the almond flavour in the marzipan – the result was just yummy!

There was just one slight problem… Marzipan isn’t a huge fan of being baked and has a tendency to burn in the oven if it’s at the surface of the bread. To ensure this doesn’t happen (and it’s really something you want to avoid as it gives a very bitter flavour to the crust if it burns), I grate the marzipan so the pieces are small (then if a little bit catches it’s too small to really notice), cover the bread with a thin layer of flour (that gives a little protection), and cover the bread in foil relatively early in the baking process just after it has browned.

Marzipan, Cherry & Orange Blossom Sweet Soda Bread

Active Time:10 minutes

Total Time:45 minutes

Makes 1 small loaf (about 8 slices)

Ingredients

• 200g plain flour + a little extra to sprinkle on top
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 20g caster sugar
• 50g marzipan
• 50g glacé cherries
• 1 tsp orange blossom water
• 140ml buttermilk

Method

1. Pre-heat your oven to 220ºC/200ºC fan.
2. Chop the glacé cherries (50g) in halves and coarsely grate the marzipan (50g).
3. Put all of the dry ingredients into a large bowl (200g plain flour, ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda, 20g caster sugar, grated marzipan and chopped cherries). Give them a good mix.
4. Add the orange blossom water (1 tsp) and buttermilk (140ml) and stir until fully combined.
5. Form the dough into a ball and place it onto a baking tray. Sprinkle a little flour on top and then use a sharp knife to cut slits into a cross shape on top.
6. Put the bread into the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Loosely cover the bread with foil (to stop the top burning) and return it to the oven for a further 20 minutes.
7. Check the loaf is cooked by tapping the bottom, it should sound hollow. If it doesn’t pop it back into the oven (still covered in foil) for a few more minutes.
8. Once cooked, place the bread on a wire rack to cool.

If you love the sound of this bread then you’ll also want to look at…

My MARZIPAN AND CHERRY CAKE with a layer of gooey marzipan running through the centre, or if you like sweet soda bread you should try my CHOCOLATE CHIP SODA BREAD.

This is the estimated nutritional information per slice (assuming 8 slices from 1 loaf). Please refer to my guide to Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen nutritional information if you want to learn more about how this is calculated.

Free From/Suitable For

• Suitable for vegetarians
• Egg-Free
• Corn-Free
• Soy-Free

The ingredients for this recipe are commonly available free from all these allergens. However, please ensure you double-check allergen information for all ingredients.

I’m sharing this post with #AlphaBakes with The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline Makes . Each month you have to create a recipe based on a random letter of the alphabet, the letter of the month for March is C (for cherries in this case).