Scottish Fare: Irn Bru Recipe #2

Today I thought I'd try something naturally sweet with another bottle of our Scottish Irn Bru. I wanted to try cupcakes.

Due to pandemic-shortages at the store, it ended up being more prudent to make a poundcake. So Irn Bru poundcake, with Irn Bru icing it was.

Now to be fair, I have to admit that while I LOVE cake... I don't tend to prefer poundcake. It's a bit too sweet and far too rich for my everyday tastes. But in working with what I had on hand, I figured that cake was cake... and if I didn't end up liking it, there's a 24-year-old starveling in the house that will happily gobble up any baked goodie he sees lying around.

To keep things simple, I used a very simple recipe:
1 1/2 c gluten-free all-purpose flour
1 1/2 c raw sugar
 3/4 c softened butter
3 eggs
and 1/4 cup Irn Bru

Preheat oven to 310F and grease a bread pan (in hindsight, I should have also floured it!) then set aside.
Cream the butter and sugar, then slowly add the flour in thirds.
Add the eggs one a time, then pour in the Irn Bru and mix just until combined.
Pour into pan, and bake for 80 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

For the glaze, I mixed 2 Tbsp Irn Bru with 1 cup powdered sugar. (and only used half of it)

The cake did not rise quite as much as I wanted, but with gluten-free baking that's always a possibility. It had a beautiful buttery crispy crust on the top, but the minute I went to release it from the pan... the crust evaporated. (I did try a crumb, and yes it tastes positively divine!) And I didn't need nearly as much glaze as I'd made, but I am a frosting girl so that may be personal preference.

How did it taste? The cake itself was far more buttery than I wanted, and honestly, I couldn't taste the Irn Bru - it just tasted of sugar and butter. The texture was lovely, however; with a delicate melt-in-your-mouth crumb. The glaze itself DID taste of Irn Bru and was quite good - but when you mix a too-sweet drink with straight sugar, you get something that's painfully sweet. I paired the tiniest of slices with an extra-strong cup of Edinburgh tea and enjoyed it as a sugary sweet, rich buttery treat.


Would someone else like this? Absolutely! If you like rich, buttery sweet cake and soda-flavored glaze, this would be amazing. For me, I will stick to the occasional cupcake.

But it was a fun adventure. The color is a beautiful pale orange and the texture is divine... and while I personally would not choose to eat this, I am sure that my son will love it once he gets home from work. Because just between you and me... I made this for him. Unlike my daughter and me, HE likes poundcake... and his waistline will not suffer from eating an entire cake!