A couple of years ago I made Guinness Irish Soda Bread with Slow Cooker Corned Beef and Cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day. I couldn’t help but think of that when I was making Irish Cast Iron Skillet Corned Beef Colcannon Casserole this year even though it was full of potatoes. I love carbs! Plus I rarely eat bread, so I really felt the need to make soda bread to go with the casserole. But how could I do that and not be repeating the same menu? Irish Soda Muffins were the answer. I really liked the idea of turning soda bread into smaller portions to accompany an already carb-rich meal. And they’re kinda cute LOL.
A new twist on a classic Irish bread recipe.
The Ingredients
One of the nice things about soda bread is that it’s full of inexpensive pantry staples. I did have to stock up on flour and buy more eggs, but I had most of the other ingredients.
One thing I did sort of change was the buttermilk. My regular grocery store doesn’t stock small containers of it, and I hate the stuff. Buying a large container of buttermilk and throwing out the majority of it makes me feel wasteful.
Instead, I use lemon juice to curdle regular milk which I always keep in my refrigerator. Here’s how:
- Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to a measuring cup
- Pour in enough milk to measure one cup
- Let it sit for five minutes
- Use the mixture as you would use buttermilk
I can’t tell you if it tastes the same since I’ve never tried my substitute (yuck!), but I have never noticed a difference in the taste of the recipes I use it in. And there’s no waste of money or food so win-win in my book.
The Process
The instructions for this recipe were clear and easy to follow. The whole process went very smoothly until I had to add the batter to the muffin tin. I ended up with 10 cups filled, so I had to take a little from each until I had all 12 filled. But that’s on me and not the recipe’s fault at all.
As far as time goes, I came pretty close to the 25 minutes listed. I baked my Irish soda muffins for 22 minutes, so the whole process took me 27 minutes. That’s in line with the times given, though, so I was quite pleased.
One thing to note is the butter needs to be blended into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender. Don’t worry if you don’t have one, though, because you can use a fork instead. I find it a little awkward compared to my pastry blender, but it works almost as well.
