Soda bread may have become quite popular outside of Ireland, but I’ve never seen treacle soda anywhere. This dark sticky soda bread was sold as farls when I was a child, especially around Hallowe’en and bright chilly autumn days. The earthy sweetness of the treacle works beautifully with the slightly sharp taste of the bicarbonate of soda to create something as warm and mellow as you feel when kicking your way through a pile of autumnal leaves.

When making treacle soda, I prefer to bake it as a loaf rather than make flat farls on the stove as the dough is quite sticky and hard to roll out. If you are a better scone maker than me (which is barely a challenge) then try the treacle and ginger in your scones if you’d like something smaller and afternoon tea appropriate than slices of still warm bread, slathered in butter and eaten at 4 o’clock when the day feels endless and dinner a million miles away. Read more