Irish Soda Bread

My Dad told me when I was younger to wear new shoes in the rain to help break them in faster.
Unfortunately, I haven't gotten new shoes in a while so the only silver lining to this rain is the nap I'm looking forward to when I get home!

It was actually pretty nice out yesterday, and what better way to spend my day off than with my best friend? Kitty came to pick me up and we decided some baking was in order. 

Usually, we make things from scratch and thus use more ingredients, but we made an exception this time because the Soda Bread mix was actually Irish! Fancy stuff.

Since it is from the motherland, we had to measure everything out using the metric system. This is unusual for us crazy Americans. Granted, the Metric system makes more sense (...or it should) but we have traditions here in 'Murica, and our backwards measuring system is one of them, gosh darn it!

The only ingredients were the mix and some milk before it was time to stir it up and knead it.

That part didn't go exactly the way it was supposed to...

'

But, we got it into the oven looking like it was supposed to! Score one for Kittredge and Ingrid!

As we were waiting patiently (somewhat patiently... mostly Kitty with the patience...) for our test batch to come out, Kitty had the quite brilliant idea for a little summer-y parfait. 

Just look at all the fresh fruit and sweet whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Mmmmmmmm (now I want another one)

That, my friends, is the face of pure joy... along with a pinch of goofiness! 

I think out test batch came out pretty well, don't you? We had some still warm from the oven; mine with some raspberry preserve while Kitty kept hers traditional with butter (weeeeeellll, Brummel and Brown which is slightly less traditional, but I'm willing to let it slide this once).