Everybody to his own taste, but that’s the gur cake that put the red neck on me. There’s a type of gur cake on sale all over the county also. It’s a brown, soft, square lump with raisins in it, between two crusts of pastry. There’s gur cake for you now, and the other crowd never heard of it, but they know all about Dicky Rock and the Vampires. Do you know what—I wouldn’t torment my brains arguing with that class of people.
New Ross Standard, 1 March 1969
Gur cakes, also known as fruit slices, chester cakes, donkey’s gudge (primarily in Cork), gudge cakes and depth charges (1940s dock slang), are fruit-filled confections particularly associated with schoolchildren and Dublin (one 1956 article calls them Manchester cakes, attributing ‘gur cake’ to ‘the Christian Brothers schoolboys’). The actual composition of gur cakes, usually sold for a penny a piece, was an ingenious way to recycle bakery leftovers like stale bread, cake, and pudding. Ignore any comparison to the UK’s flies’ graveyard (fly cemetery, Scottish fruit slice, etc) – while slightly similar in appearance, the reinvention of scraps into a marketable item sets it apart. In Darina Allen’s Irish Traditional Cooking, Dublin folklorist Éamonn Mac Thomáis, author of Gur Cake and Coal Blocks, speaks about the origins of the gur cake, which was “bought in the shops but seldom made in the home:”
“At the end of the day a shop would have excess bread, excess biscuits, excess cakes. They put them aside for a week, by which time the bread was rock hard and the biscuits were all soft and mushy, so they’d put the whole lot in a barrel, put a bucket of water in on top and stir it all up into a mush. Then they’d throw in a couple of tins of treacle, a bit of candied peel, a few currants or raisins or anything like that and mix it all in. Then they put all the mixture on top of a layer of pastry and then put another layer of pastry on top again. In fact there used to be a lovely marking on top and everyone was convinced in Inchicore that the woman in the shop used her false teeth to mark it, but she maintained that she did it with a fork! Then they’d paint it with egg to give it the shine and sprinkle it with a it of sugar to give it a glisten. It only took about 10 minutes in the oven because it was all pre-cooked. The smell of that coming out of the oven on a big tray was gorgeous! It was very popular at a halfpenny a slice — nearly as popular as a halfpenny cigarette.”
It was the special dish of young gentlemen who absented themselves from school and flaunted rebellion in the face of all lawful authority.
Dublin Evening Mail, 25 Oct 1955
The low price was attractive to students skipping school, known as “mitching” or being “on the gur.” Gur is short for gurrier, which the Irish Times defines as “Irish slang for a troublemaker or bad-mannered person or general rascal. Take our word for it, gurriers are generally up to no good.”
It is possible buy cheap, fresh currant buns and large slabs of pastry—and bread-pudding called mysteriously “Chester cake.” The kindly shopkeeper seems to realise the gravity of disposing of one’s whole capital of, say, twopence. So she allows ample time for the necessary consideration of the merits of rival foods. To the hungry young mortals who eat, either bun or cake tastes very good, and if funds “run to” a bottle of fizzy mineral waters the feast is fit for gods or men.
Dublin Evening Telegraph, 27 June 1924
While I found a few references to gur cakes being “eaten by the poor of Dublin in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries” (Donal Skehan), verifying this or tracing the “gur cake” as we know it farther back than the teens proves problematic. The “chester cake” does pop up during that time period. One 1955 Dublin Evening Mail article claims they were sold at Waxies’ Dargle around the turn of the century where they were called such “in the upper circles of the little snobs amongst whom I was reared.” Chester cakes were advertised in 1891 by Dublin’s A.M. Moriarty & Co. in the Leinster Leader, and were sampled by the Public Health Committee in Cork in 1886. The earliest newspaper reference to chester cakes comes from 1838, when a Miss Harriet Butler entered a confectionary shop owned by a Mr. Andrew Feeny of Parliament Street. She claimed that she paid for and ate one cake, while Mr. Feeny tried to prove that she ate an additional chester cake, to which “Miss Butler protested that that was a cake which nothing could induce her to eat:”
By a juror–Were there any other persons in the shop at the time eating chester cakes?
Witness—There might have been
Juror—Was there any possibility of your mistaking a chester cake for a bun?
Witness—Not the least
Juror – Did you see her finishing the bun before she took the chester cake?
Witness—I did not.
Mr. Feeny, who “had accused the ladies of Dublin of constantly pilfering him of cakes,” was fined one shilling and the matter was settled amicably. Either way, I am unsure if the chester cake Miss Butler so disliked is the same one it refers to today – some sources give the impression that they were called gur cakes first (1910s), with chester cakes being applied later, which would mean two entirely different desserts. Looking at older recipes, I have a sneaking suspicion that chester cakes did indeed have a fruit filling sandwiched between two layers of pastry, but not the characteristic bread or cake crumbs.
Ingredients
SHORTCRUST
Storebought, frozen crust can be used for gur cakes – many recipes even call for puff pastry. Any kind can be used – just thaw before baking. Most of the recipes that call for homemade dough use a variation of shortcrust. Shortcrust pastry (pâte brisée) is your typical pie or tart dough. The flour to fat ratio is 2:1, with ice water as the binding agent. Sweet shortcrust pastry (sweetcrust or pâte sucrée) has additional sugar and an egg, lending itself well to dishes like this one.
STALE CAKE/BREAD
Darina Allen’s recipe calls for stale cake crumbs, but since leftover cake is a rarity, any kind of bread, muffin or even plum pudding can be used instead – it doesn’t even have to be stale. I used a mix of white bread, cinnamon raisin bread, and English muffins. If you’re using cake or pudding with fruit in it already, you can cut back on the additional dried fruit.
MAKE IT VEGAN
Since sweetcrust pastry contains an egg, shortcrust (with margarine or plant-based butter) is the way to go – you can add a teaspoon or two of sugar. If not using a storebought crust, I’ll include a recipe below. If you choose to use milk to moisten the filling, plant-based milk will work fine, and the optional egg can be omitted.
Gur Cake Recipe
Adapted from the original recipe in Irish Traditional Cooking. While it tasted great, I needed to work on the proportions – this may be due to the fact that it is closer to the “depth charge” of the 1930s than the immediately recognizable, thick, densely-packed slabs with thin crust layers of today. Her sweetcrust recipe is a keeper and I will include it below along with a plain shortcrust option suitable for a vegan diet.
INGREDIENTS
2 sheets shortcrust or homemade pastry**
2 cups crumbled cake, muffins or bread (can be stale and crusts can be left on)
4-5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
2 tsp mixed spice
⅔ cup mixed dried fruit
2 tablespoons candied peel
5-6 tablespoons milk (dairy or plant-based, you could even use cold black tea)
1 large egg, beaten (you can omit this if you’re making a vegan version)
optional: any other mix-ins, brown sugar (I added a few teaspoons)
METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C.
2. Grease an oven-safe dish or pan. Make the pastry (if not using storebought), cover and let it rest.
3. Combine crumbs, flour, baking powder, spice, fruit and candied peel. Heat milk and mix into dry ingredients. Whisk egg and add.
4. Line pan with half the pastry. Cover with fruit mixture and lay remaining pastry on top, making slits in the top. Bake 45 minutes to an hour and cool before cutting.
**Here are two crust recipes that can be used:
Sweetcrust & Shortcrust Recipes
SWEETCRUST PASTRY
From Irish Traditional Cooking.
INGREDIENTS
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
2 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
1 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour
METHOD
1. Cream the butter and sugar.
2. Beat in eggs, reduce speed and add flour.
3. Chill for at least an hour or overnight.
SHORTCRUST PASTRY
From The Best of Irish Bread & Baking.
INGREDIENTS
250g / 9oz / heaped 2 cups all-purpose flour
125g / 4.5oz / 1 stick + 1 tablespoon butter, cut into small pieces (dairy or plant-based)
50ml / 2fl oz / ¼ cup ice water
METHOD
1. Sift the flour into bowl or food processor.
2. Rub butter into flour using fingers or food processor.
3. Slowly add cold water. Mix until dough just comes together, then turn out.
4. Knead lightly, cover with cling wrap and chill in fridge for at least 20 minutes.
cleite agus cnámh 