English/Irish/Scottish

Your Irish grandmother might not recognize this cheesy version of traditional soda bread. Like its sweeter, raisin-studded cousin, it is quick to make before a hearty breakfast. Before baking, the bread is marked with a deep cross and pricked in the four triangles “to let the fairies out.’’ The bread is best eaten on the same day it is baked, but makes delicious toast for a couple more days.

In Ireland and the UK, a flapjack is a baked bar, cooked in an oven tin and cut into rectangles, made from rolled oats, fat (typically butter), brown sugar and usually Golden syrup or honey. As well as being baked at home, they are widely available in shops, ready-packaged, often with extra ingredients such as chocolate, dried fruit, nuts, yoghurt and toffee pieces or coatings, either as individual servings or full unsliced trayfuls. They are usually an alternative to a biscuit (cookie) or cake, and textures range from soft and moist to dry and crisp.

Clafoutis is a shallow French cake, something like a large puffy pancake, traditionally baked with cherries. The batter takes minutes to whir in a blender. Here, Central Kitchen’s Gary Strack uses blackberries, but you can bake a clafoutis with any fruit in season. In the fall, try it with apples or pears.