An Alternative Use for Beer

Today I received a box of treasures from an online cookware store (http://www.cakescookiesandcraftshop.co.uk/ for those of you in the UK).  I went online to buy some Easter Egg moulds (results coming next week!) but faced with a whole universe of cookware it was impossible for me simply to buy a couple of things!  I came away with various chocolate moulds, new dariole moulds, tartlet tins, a new cooling rack, decorative cellophane bags, and and and... anyway, this was a great start to my day (small things, eh?!)

Another thing which cheered me was using my new traditional Mason Cash mixing bowl which was on our wedding list and John Lewis have only just deigned to deliver.  Don't get me wong, John Lewis are fab, but they were a bit slow on the missing things off our list (we got married in December, and now it's March?!) 

Ah, a big traditional mixing bowl.  It's first outing was to make honey beer bread as per gimmesomeoven's recipe.  I ate the first slice hot out of the oven and though it burnt my mouth I was that keen, it is awesome!  I have to confess, once I found this, I tried to find a British recipe to save me having to convert cups and fluid ounces, but I couldn't find one.  And this bread is also something I have never come across in the UK - peeps, I can only recommend it!!!

My rough conversions are based on a UK sized bottle of beer which isn't as large as a US one.

100g plain white bread flour
130g brown bread flour
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp honey
1 beer (275ml)
20g melted butter

It's a super easy recipe and doesn't need any time to rise.  Preheat the oven to 170C.
Mix together the dry ingredients.
Melt the honey in the microwave until it's really runny.  Stir the honey and beer into the dry ingredients (I mixed some beer with the honey first to make it more liquid)
Be careful not to over mix- this is a bit like a muffin mixture.
Transfer to a loaf tin and the drizzle with the melted butter
Cook for around 50 mins to 1 hr when a skewer comes out clean.

It's quite a sweet bread this, and very cakey and solid.  Mr B wanted to call it cead or bake (do you see what he did there?!)  It works fantastically with cheese and cold meats and Mr B and I scoffed nearly the whole thing in one go.  Greedy us!