MORE OF MY HERETICAL IDEAS:
Play around with the Barmbrack recipe. I substituted dried bananas, strawberries and pineapple chunks for the raisins. I substituted green tea instead of black tea. I used turbinado sugar instead of dark brown sugar. Barmbrack seems to be a sort of whatever-you-have-on-hand sort of recipe, so feel free to be flexible with it. You could skip the fruit and tea altogether and use chocolate chips, chopped nuts, and coffee, if you like.
Muffins. Like I suggested above. These will cook faster than a single loaf, and allow for more individualized messages in people’s fortunes. Just pray to Whomever you normally invoke in you divination practice to make sure you insert the right charm in the right muffin-cup.
Brownies. Or blondies. Or lasagna. So long as it’s a baked food you can successfully hide a parchment-wrapped charm in, why not? Especially at Halloween or New Year’s. Serve your family some hot-dish-surprise tonight.
Insta-Divination Cheat. Don’t have time to bake Barmbrack or any other quick bread? No problem. Stop by a bakery, purchase a cake, focaccia, or some other unsliced loaf of bread. With a sharp, pointy knife, make a series of deep incisions in the sides or top of the cake or loaf, whichever will make where you placed the charms more invisible, then stick your parchment-wrapped charms in the incisions. Make sure you’re either wearing sterile gloves or have really-clean hands when you do this. If you purchased a plain cake, like sponge cake, you can frost it with canned frosting afterward and no one will be any the wiser.
Pizza. Think really outside the box. You could do this form of divination easily with a deep-dish. You could also do it with regular pizza, if you had a sufficiency of toppings to hide the charms and you layered the charms on top of the sauce before adding the cheese and toppings.
One last thing: don’t spring this divination method on people unknowingly. Let them know there are inedible objects in the loaf. You don’t want anyone to swallow–or choke–on their fortune! Have fun with this divination method. May it bring you happy times with friends, family and co-workers, and useful guidance for the future. And know that in observing this custom, you’re the latest link in a chain, continuing a tradition centuries old.
