There is history, pain, survival, and ingenuity, baked and cooked into many dishes and foods around the world. Here in the Caribbean, we have dishes with that sort of background such as fresh pigeon peas and rice, Shine rice, Privilege (rice cooked with ochroes and salt fish), and Doved peas among others. Then there are those foods that have travelled that we have adapted and incorporated as part of the food scene of this corner of the world where many of our ancestors came, whether forced, fooled or in search of a better life and prosperity. Chester cake, also known as Gur cake, Gudge or Donkey’s Gudge, comes from very humble beginnings.
According to author Eamonn MacThomas (Gur Cake and Coal Blocks, O Brien Press, 1978), who was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, there is an old term, gurrier, used to describe street urchins who tended to get up to mischief. These children who most likely lived in city tenements, would be seen ducking and diving around the city centre grabbing food where they could. In bakeries, any cake cuttings and stale bread at the end of the day went to the gurriers who took them home to be transformed into a treat: Gur Cake, Chester Cake.
Back in the day in Guyana, Chester Cake used to be popular and highly sought after but I am not sure that the same holds true today, amidst the vast array of other fare on offer. There are certain things though that will never go out of style because they are simply a taste of home and Chester Cake is one of those treats. Of course, we made it our own with the addition of rum-soaked fruits instead of simply adding raisins or currants.
All around, we find ourselves, again, in this lifetime, living through a period of hardship as a result of the pandemic, therefore, the ability to use up stale bits of bread, rolls and ends of cake if available with some cold tea, sugar, spices and a bit of dried fruits, which we are mostly likely to have around, seems a no brainer. Time to make some Chester Cake. And while the filling is sandwiched between two slices of thin pastry, we can eliminate the pastry if unavailable, after all, it is really the cake part that we like.
I first made Chester Cake more than a decade ago – making it up as I went along but I have since found a recipe that is simple.
CHESTER CAKE
Yield: 9 x 5 loaf pan
INGREDIENTS
● 8 cups of crumbled stale bread, bread rolls or cake bits or a
combination thereof
● 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
● 1 teaspoon ground ginger
● ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg
● Heaped half cup of sugar
● 1 cup cold (room temperature) black tea
● ½ cup orange juice
● Heaped half cup rum-soaked fruits (Christmas fruits)
● 1 sheet shortcrust pastry dough (13 x 9)
DIRECTIONS
1. Add the following to a large bowl and mix well – bread, spices, and sugar
2. Add the tea, juice and rum fruits to the bread mixture and mix well to combine. Let rest for an hour, longer if you like, at room temperature.
3. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
4. Divide the pastry in half and roll each piece to line and fill the bottom and top of the pan — the pastry does not need to come up the sides of the pan. Cover the bottom of the pan with one piece of pastry and prick all over the pastry with a fork.
5. Add the bread filling to the pastry lined pan. Smooth evenly and then top with the other piece of the pastry, ensure the pastry completely covers the filling. Prick all over the top with a fork.
6. Transfer to the oven and bake for 90 minutes. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool completely before removing from the pan and cutting.
Cynthia
cynthia@tasteslikehome.org
