I shared this picture during last week (if the title doesn’t give it away, it’s a homemade malt loaf) and quite a few people expressed an interest in having a go too, so I thought I’d share a quick and easy recipe for making it yourself…

Actually, my recipe was probably quicker and easier than most as I had a bag of malt loaf bread flour that simply required yeast, salt, sugar, butter/oil and some raisins in the bread machine, but you don’t need a special flour, or a bread machine to do this and I trawled the web to find a tried and tested recipe to share.

I settled on this recipe from Baking Mad which doesn’t even use yeast so negates needing time (great for those as impatient as myself!) I haven’t tried it personally, but I have tried many of their recipes with great success…

• How to Make:

1. Heat the oven to 180C,350F, gas 4. Grease and flour a 450 g|1lb loaf tin.
2. Put the sultanas, raisins, butter and water into a pan. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool a little.
3. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a mixing bowl. Stir in the sugar.
4. Pour in the warm fruit mixture and add the beaten egg and malt extract. Mix well until blended.
5. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for for 35 – 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.
6. Serve sliced and spread with butter.

If you do give this recipe a go, let me know! Once I’ve used up my massive bag of malt loaf flour (which you can order online, I found mine in a local garden centre with a good food hall) I’ll be giving this a shot!

xxx