Martje's Peat Cake: a Southern Institution

Peat Cake: a Southern Institution

Baronous Hodge on peat cake: Food in the south of Frewyn, much like the food of Westren, is sometimes an odd thing. It is no less expert than the food belonging to the rest of the kingdom; it only champions on a different set of rules: ‘It doesn’t have to look right. It just has to taste good’ was the description I was given upon seeing my first piece of what they call peat cake. It is neither peat nor cake really. It is more like a choking hazard wrapped in sugar, an accident waiting to happen in the throat of the unsuspecting foreigner, a regional lark played upon those who are only too willing to try the most misshapen dessert in history, one which all those in the designs laugh at. Peat cake is the closest thing Frewyn can have as a national disaster-- it is a carriage wreck in a tar pit, it is a dish that gave up on itself half way through being made, it is affront to almost every sense excepting taste, and yet Frewyners in the south claim is as a treasure, a thing which everyone grows up loving, and will beat you with their slanes for berating it. It hardly scrapes by on the high moral standard of Frewyn nutrition, and yet every ingluvious Frewyner south of Sethshire will proclaim you an absolute dizzard for disliking it. If I am asked about it, I must remark that peat cake is the stain on the country cloth of culinary brilliancy. It is so shocking as a dessert that I cannot think it made for any reason other than fill out the list of regional heritage right. The smell is well enough, having the scent of roasted chestnut and ginger that has weakened over time, but it looks rather like two slices of something that have been trod in the mud, picked up, wiped off on someone’s shirt, and put back together again. The taste is tolerable by the kingdom’s esteemed standards, but the texture is what makes it mostly disagreeable. I do not like a dessert that tries to run away whilst I’m trying to eat it. The two ginger slabs know how to stay where they are bid, but the centre of the cake likes escaping, usually taking one of the two slabs along with it. The filling part of the business can vary depending the baker and what she has at hand, but every time I am given a slice, and every time I am told I shall love it this time, I get one bite into it before I need a trowel and builder’s slate to finish it. The peat part of the cake is nearly always a form of gingerbread, one that has decided it would rather be ginger rock, employed to soak up some of the filling and keep the brickhouses lined. In Marridon, we have a dessert like it called tar cake, a favourite in Upper Alys with the mining families there, a phenomenon seemingly born out of the mines and brought to light by those who have no idea what to do with what is good for them, only tar cake is made with molasses and is eaten by those who like more adventure out of their desserts than the usual ideas of stationary food warrants. Peat cake, like tar cake, is the dessert of the working class and is a standing lesson in resourcefulness, using the unloved bread ends and auxiliaries of the autumn harvest and trying to make them useful. Peat cake is made with purpose more than love, made more to fill the stomach than please the palate, or at any rate made to quiet a child who wants their sweet and will not get it any other way. The cake, which I am still convinced began as a lark, is now an institution in communities in and around Glaoustre, and a necessity to the prison guards in Karnwyl, who are not permitted to bring much by way of outside food into the prison. Should the wardens bring something worth having, the prisoners might pine for it, but keep them in a prison of peat cake and they should never dare escape, the chestnut sludge in the filling making a sufficient hindrance. If peat cake does nothing else, it certainly removes bad company from the table. I have heard of many lords in the south keeping some aside in case an unwanted guest should come to call. Two slabs of stale gingerbread held together by a gallimaufry of sugar and nuts is an effective deterrent. I told a man from Karnwyl he was wrong for liking this when there are a hundred other exquisite things to eat in this country, and he abused me for it. It is not prejudice to remark that one thing is better than another, but his own bias got the better of him, and he told me, in his sheep herder’s cant, “Hwell, sur, there’s no accountin’ fer tayste, and bein’ from Marridon as yow are, where they don’t know how to do dinners, yow b’ant be tellin’ us how to do dessert.”

Martje’s method: The only good thing about a peat cake is it don’t have to look good, just gotta

taste better than it looks. It’s supposed to look a bit beclarted. Sure that’s part of the charm. We never made ‘em on the farms growin’ up, ‘cause we had better desserts and always a bushel of store apples ready for cookin’, but when my brothers when down to Sethsire for their apprenticin’, they said they had ‘em on the holdin’ and weren’t too impressed. Sure it was somethin’ to eat anyway, and that’s the point of it, not to impress nobles or to look good for entertainin’. It’s somethin’ minin’ families put together, to use the leftover gingerbread and do somethin’ with the overstock o’ chestnuts what they collected for the pigs. I don’t make peat cake for the keep or at home, ‘cause Shayne and Maggie’d just ask me for somethin’ else anyhow, and I’d have to make a few rounds of gingerloaf just to have enough for the peat ends, which we never do ‘cause we eat ‘em in my family. We do a breadpuddin’ instead, if we got a few slices what need cheerin’ up. I learned to do peat cake from Ruta, who made it when she was a girl, she said, always havin’ it near harvest time when nothin’ better could be made with what they had. First time I made it for my ma, to see what she’d think of it, I’ll never forget what she said to me: “Sure, you’re not after puttin’ that on a plate now. It’s better in the fire or holdin’ up the byre, so it is.” She was right rotted about it, and I understood the cake’s charm and what it was for then. It’s what you give people when you don’t like ‘em too much. I said so to Mureadh, when he asked me if I could make it. When he first came to us from the south, he was tryin’ somethin’ feverish to find a slice o’ peat cake, but I told him, “We don’t got that here, son. We got better things.” He got in a fierce way about, like I’d told him his mother was a lacemutton or somethin’. Lad’s as strong as a bull, but bhi Borras his head don’t work right sometimes. I made him peat cake ‘cause I felt for him, bein’ far from home and away from his sisters and all, and I never seen a lad happier in my life. The trick to makin’ a good peat cake, if a good one we’re callin’ it, is to keep it simple: hard ginger loaf, not too sweet, ‘cause they don’t got much sugar in Karnwyl, for the outside crust part of it, and a good spice mash for the middle. The fillin’ is almost always a chestnut mash. Stewed together with apple, maple, some suet and a bit o’ honey, the chestnut does right well as a flavour. I put in orange peel and some brandy butter to make it a bit more excitin’, but Mureadh had kittens when I told him how I did mine. Gotta be traditional, he says, so here’s the tradition of it: make a soft gingerloaf from flour, ginger, spice, treacle, and eggs. Mix together and pour into a pan, and bake it on a good heat for about an hour. If you did it right, it’ll have a good fluff on it, more like a cake than a bread, but we’re leavin’ that aside till it hardens, ‘cause folk from the south don’t like nothing fresh. While that’s stalin’, steep yer chestnuts. Gotta peel the outer bit aff ‘em if we’re gonna get any use outta ‘em. Once the loaf is hard and the chestnuts are soft (should take about a day or so), peel the chestnuts and boil ‘em in a bit o’ water. Put apple and yer maple syrup in, and mash and stir till you got a good paste goin’. Add suet and honey to give it that tar texture, and put in whatever else you want for flavourin’, citrus peel or hazelnuts or what. I heard in Westren, they do a peat cake with apricot and pears instead o’ chestnut and apples and all, you just add whatever you think’ll make it taste better. You’ll know it’s cooked when it’s hard to get the spoon out. Cut the hard loaf in thin slices if you can, but if the loaf’s too hard, just do thick ones, ‘cause the look of it don’t matter much. Layer yer chestnut mix between two slices o’ gingerloaf, and leave on a warm surface till the spread starts to melt. Don’t worry if the middle squelches out. It’s supposed to do that. Good enough for a Karnwyl cake anyhow.