I Baked a Brick

Across the street from me are two very nice elderly couples. Every once in a while, I do some baking just to let them know they are well thought of. This time I decided to bake the Irish Oat Bread (recipe on 3-17-08 blog entry) because it's delicious, different and easy to make.

But...

I decided to spiff it up a little with cinnamon and raisins.

Big mistake.

Actually. the idea wasn't a big mistake, my methodology was.

I added extra brown sugar, about 3/4 of a cup total, and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon to the basic recipe. When I got the raisins out of the cupboard, I discovered that they had dried out.

Since the bread dough is on the dry side to begin with, I didn't think it would be a good idea to have the raisins pulling moisture from the dough. Being oh so smart, I boiled some water, dumped the raisins in and let them plump before mixing them in to the dough.

I baked it the specified amount of time.

It looked beautiful.

Unfortunately, when I stuck the knife in to cut it, the knife came out gooey.

Oops.

So I baked it some more.

Still gooey.

And some more, etc, etc, etc, until I ended up with a brick. It smelled nice, and if you didn't break a tooth gnawing on it, tasted pretty darn good too.

Ah well, back to the drawing board.