Irish Soda Bread

This Irish Soda Bread recipe is super easy and such a fun recipe for kids to make! For our geography studies in our homeschool, we usually pick at least 2 or more recipes from each country to make. Most of the time, we choose a more challenging recipe for the older kids and an easier one for my littles. And most often, it’s a meal and then a dessert and the older kids are usually fixing the main course, while the littles prepare a dessert.

For Ireland though, the older kids happened to fix Irish toffee pudding, which requires a bit more skill in the kitchen, so my littles ended up fixing Irish soda bread because it is such an easy recipe and much easier than an entire meal.

Where to find easy recipes for kids?

We found this particular recipe flipping through a cookbook for kids that we purchased specifically for our geography curriculum called, “Cooking Class, Global Feast” by Deanna F. Cook. This is a phenomenal book for finding easy-to-make recipes for kids! I highly recommend grabbing this, especially for geography to help bring it to life for your littles.

My younger ones had a blast making this bread, and they practically made it by themselves. I of course gathered the ingredients and directed a bit, but they read the recipe themselves and got to work! They were so proud of themselves in the end because of this. The directions in this cookbook are super easy to follow with photos and simple instructions. If your child is a little familiar with helping in the kitchen, they will love this recipe book!

2 young girls looking at a recipe book for kids.

ingredients needed for this irish soda bread recipe?

4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoon butter, cut into small pieces
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup currants or raisins (optional)

how to make irish soda bread:

Step 1:

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Young girl stirring flour in a mixing bowl.

Step 2:

Mix the butter into the flour mixture using a pastry cutter or fork. We used a potato masher and ended up switching to a fork. The dough should become crumbly.

Mixing bowl with flour and chunks of butter.

Step 3:

Pour in the buttermilk and add the currants or raisins and stir to combine. You’ll need to use your hands to continue mixing and form the dough into a ball. Make sure your hands are clean! The dough may be a bit sticky, so you might need to flour your hands before forming into a ball. (If you don’t have any buttermilk on hand, you can make your own by combing a tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar to each cup of milk and allowing to sit for 5-10 minutes.)