Sweet Irish Soda Bread – Recipe Girl®

What is the Best Irish Soda Bread Recipe?

This Sweet Irish Soda Bread is my favorite soda bread recipe. I guess it’s the sugar that draws me in. There’s a bit of brown sugar added in to make it more of a sweet bread, and then there’s the addition of sweet and tangy dried fruit. Is it the world’s best Irish soda bread recipe? Well, that’s for you to decide. You may prefer a more traditional Irish soda bread with raisins and caraway seeds. You might like the savory classic Irish soda bread that you eat with Irish stew or roasted lamb. This sweet version is not quite as savory. It’s more of a sweet soda bread that you might like to have for breakfast or snacking. I love to serve it with butter and a drizzle of honey.

Ingredients Needed:

• Flour: I use all purpose flour for this recipe. I haven’t tried gluten-free flour, but I would imagine if you use a flour that is cup-for-cup a gluten free sub for all purpose that it will probably work.
• Brown Sugar: Use light or dark brown sugar. You can sub white sugar, if that’s all you have.
• Baking Powder, Baking Soda and Salt!
• Butter: You’ll need cold, unsalted butter.
• Buttermilk: The buttermilk activates with the baking soda to give the bread its rise (instead of using yeast).
• Eggs: You’ll need one large egg and one large egg yolk.
• Raisins: I like to use golden raisins for this recipe. They are sweet and more delicious than brown raisins, and they’ll be visually more appealing with the other dried fruit.
• Dried Cherries: These are delicious combined with the golden raisins. Look for dried cherries near the raisins in your market.

How to make Sweet Irish Soda Bread:

You’ll need a food processor to get the base of the dough going with the butter added to the dry ingredients. That’s the easiest way to do it. Otherwise, you can use a pastry cutter to cut in the butter to the flour mixture in a bowl (without the need for a food processor).

Then you’ll stir in the buttermilk and eggs and then the dried fruit. That mixture is transferred to a floured surface, where you will knead it a few times to make sure the dough comes together. Next, you’ll divide the dough in half and place two round loaves on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Slash the tops of the loaves with an “X.” And then bake until golden.