Soul Cakes

I’m a few days late, but I wanted to share with you a piece of what I have learned this year about the origin of Halloween and the tradition of something called soul cakes. Soul cakes, sometimes referred to as souls, are the precursor to Halloween trick or treating that dates to medieval England and Ireland. On All Hallows Eve , All Saint’s Day or All Soul’s Day, soul cakes were set out with glasses of wine as an offering for the dead. Then children and the poor, would go “souling” door-to-door, singing and asking for soul cakes in return for prayers for household members who had passed away, including some who were thought to have still been in purgatory. Souling has also been recorded in Germany, Austria, and as far south as Italy. Here is a photograph of a drawing of souling that was published in “St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks,” December 1882. Expect to hear more in my blog about the history of Christmas in December…..

One 1891 version of the souling song was collected by nineteenth century folklorist Lucy Broadwood and contains the following chorus:

“A soul! A soul! A soul-cake! Please good Missis, a soul-cake! An apple, a pear, a plum, or a cherry. Any good thing to make us all merry. One for Peter, two for Paul. Three for Him who made us all.“

Another fragment of lyrics preserved is “A soul cake, a soul cake, have mercy on all Christian souls for a soul cake.”

The small round cakes were usually filled with spices such as nutmeg, ginger, all spice, or cinnamon, and were decorated with currants and the sign of the cross. They may have also been served at funerals. Here is a recipe for soul cakes that I found by way of Pinterest.

175g butter

175g caster sugar

3 egg yolks

450 grams plain flour

2 teaspoons mixed spices

100g currants

A little milk to mix.

Preheat the oven to 375F. Cream the butter with the sugar until it’s light and fluffy and then beat in the egg yolks one at a time. In a separate bowl, sieve the flour and the spices together and add to the wet mixture along with the currants (reserving a small handful to decorate the tops later.) Mix with a wooden spoon and then add some milk to pull everything together into a dough. Roll out to a thickness of about 1cm and cut out rounds with a biscuit cutter. Use a straight-edged knife to make a slight cross indent in the top of each cake and then push in currents along it. Place on a piece of baking parchment on a baking tray and bake for 10-15 minutes on the fire or in the oven until golden. Allow to cool before eating.

I adapted this recipe by doubling the amount of spices from one teaspoon to two and by using raisins instead of currants. Here’s a photo of how they turned out. They are tasty, but really more of a heavy, spiced cookie than a cake. Andy says, “they taste like fall.”