Get Your "Soul Cakes" Here!

If you've been around here for any length of time, you'll know that it's that soul cake time of year. If you haven't been around here, you're probably asking yourself, "What the hell is a soul cake?" Which is a very appropriate question since a soul cake is like a get-out-of-jail-free card but for Hell. Yes, a Get-Out-of-Hell-Free cake.

If you'd like to know more and see what they look like, you can go here and, for an actual recipe, here. They're pretty tasty treats.

Unfortunately, we didn't make any this year. It's just been that kind of year. Of course, we didn't make any last year, either, but that's because Sonoma county was on fire last year, and we just didn't do it. Of course, I am writing this ahead of Halloween, so I suppose we could still make some, but I don't think it's happening this year. If it turns out I'm wrong, I'll make pictures about it.

Anyway! Even though we didn't make any this year, you can still get yours by buying my story of the same title and which features soul cakes prominently. Come on, it's a Halloween story, and who doesn't need a Halloween story? NO ONE! That's who! So pick up your copy of What Time Is the Tea Kettle?... Oh, right! You get stories for the price of one! Because it's "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?" and "Soul Cakes"! What a bargain!

Come on, help a guy out. It's even got a flying cat! And, no, he wasn't launched from a catapult. He does the flying, of sorts, all on his own.

Look, I don't ask (tell) you guys to buy stuff from me very often, so pick up your copy today and READ it. It's fun!

Oh, and, hey! There's another story featuring the man and his cat coming soon!
Just soon, okay!
As soon as it's finished!

This Is What Soul Tastes Like (a recipe post)

Research can take you to some interesting places at times, and it was research for... something (yeah, I don't have any idea, now, what I was actually researching at the time)... that led me to soul cakes. Soul cakes became the inspiration for a novelette which you can find in "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?" and has also become the inspiration for making some of our own every year. [I use the term "every" rather loosely as this is only the second time we have done this.]

I gave a brief history of the food item in last year's post, but I'd like to add to that by saying that soul cakes were made by the wealthy to hand out to the poor in no small part just to show off how wealthy they were. Many (many) of the ingredients were luxury items, and some of them (like saffron) were extreme luxury items. Also, this is, at least in part if not in full, where the tradition of trick-or-treating comes from.

I think this year's attempt, for which we went as authentic as we could, finding a recipe from 1604!, turned out even better than last year's. Yes, indeed, I did save some souls!

Now, here's my wife to explain the recipe:

Last year we made what is basically a modern cookie--because most of the recipes that call themselves "soul cakes" on the internet are modern cookies, by which I mean they are leavened with chemical agents (baking powder and baking soda). There is nothing wrong with cookies, but they aren't medieval food, and this year I wanted to do a more authentically medieval soul cake. That meant making one that was leavened with yeast, which led to the basic recipe that we used this year, which is from 1604: click here. Quoting, the recipe they used goes like this: "Take flower & sugar & nutmeg & cloves & mace & sweet butter & sack & a little ale barme, beat your spice, & put in your butter & your sack, cold, then work it well all together, & make it in little cakes, & so bake them, if you will you may put in some saffron into them and fruit."

So first off, whoa, it's like people in the late middle ages / early modern era didn't even know how to spell and punctuate or something. And second, what the heck are some of these ingredients??

Using the Gode Cookery translation of the recipe, here's what I came up with:

1/2 cup ale

1 tsp active dry yeast

2 cups flour (I use white whole wheat)

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 tsp. each nutmeg, clove, and mace

1/2 tsp. saffron

1/2 cup dried currants

2 tbsp butter

1/2 cup sweet sherry

When I looked at the recipe last year, some of the instructions made zero sense to me. But this year I was determined to figure it out, and it turns out that the ingredients in the recipe themselves lead to some pretty interesting history.

"Ale barme" is now just called "barm" and it is the foam that forms on top of fermented alcohol such as beer or wine: click here. The foam contains yeast, so, in medieval England it was routine practice to skim that off and use it to leaven breads. This barm bread was considered to be very good stuff: "The barm method appears to be an ancient method developed by Gaelic peoples in the mists of time, and was quite different to that used in Europe, which is to leaven bread with a sourdough or leaven (the French call it 'levain'). When the Romans first conquered Gaul, modern day France, they were astonished by the light sweet bread made by the Celtic inhabitants... In England noblemen's bread, manchet was always made with the barm method, whereas the commoners' bread maslin was a sourdough." link

And while I knew what the other ingredients were, I hadn't quite thought about what their meaning in the culture of the time was. Spices and sugar seem very common and easy to get and not all that expensive to us now, but that was not true in 1604 and earlier. Saffron was and still is quite expensive, and was usually an import to England (though there was some farming of it within England for a time). There was even a brief war over saffron. Saffron gave both bright color and interesting flavor to foods, AND, EVEN BETTER: Europeans thought it was a plague cure! So it was a culinary and medicinal luxury good.

The first step in this recipe is to get your saffron ready for use by extracting it in some alcohol. This helps bring out the color and flavor. Soaking the saffron in a couple of teaspoons of brandy or any other strong alcohol, it starts out looking like this:

And very quickly becomes this:

Then I prepped the "ale barm" substitute by mixing 1/2 cup of good local ale with 1 tsp of active dry yeast.

I combined the flour and sugar in a bowl, made a well in the middle, and poured in the ale barm to let it sit and proof. Were I to do this again, I would probably use instant yeast because it doesn't require proofing, and I think that might lend a slightly lighter character to the finished cake. Though it probably wouldn't be quite as authentic that way, either.

Sugar was also a luxury imported good in England, and sugarcane was being grown in Spain and Siciliy (link). In the decades after 1604, of course, the demand for sugar would drive colonization of the new world and the enslavement of many people. "Its price per pound in 14th and 15th century England was about equally as high as imported spices from tropical Asia such as mace (nutmeg), ginger, cloves, and pepper, which had to be transported across the Indian Ocean in that era." Sugar was also thought to have medicinal properties (sorry medieval people, lol, you were wrong).

Meantime, Andrew creamed together the butter and spices in a small bowl.

Look into the spoon...THERE IS A MAN IN THE SPOON! Oh, it's just Andrew.

Then I added the sherry to the creamed butter and spices. This seemed unnecessary to me, but the recipe said to do it, so I did. I ended up with lumps of spicy butter floating in sherry. Not a very effective technique, and even if you were to beat in the sherry slowly you'd still end up with this result. Since everything is going to get mixed into the dough anyway, why not just add the components separately? Anyway, sherry was an import from Spain to England, and spices came from far-away places such as the Middle East and Asia (link). I used a sweet sherry in the recipe because that's what sherry was then--sweet and probably not as high in alcohol as modern sherry. (I had a reference for that but don't know what I did with it!)

After steeping in the alcohol for a while, the saffron starts to look like a little sun in its glass.

The beginning of mixing everything together! I covered the ale barm well over with the flour and sugar, then poured in the sherry and spices and saffron. Then began to stir...

After my dough was holding together, I turned it out onto a wooden peel to knead.

Then added in the currants...

And kept kneading until they were all incorporated.

Then it was time to roll the dough out into a disk, about half an inch thick...

That's a closeup of one of the saffron threads in the rolled dough. I just think saffron is really cool.

After rolling the dough out, I used a cookie cutter to make rounds, then Andrew and I marked the shape of the cross on them. After letting them sit to rise for about 15 minutes, I baked them at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes--but they might need a bit more or less in someone else's oven.

Texture-wise, these soul cakes are interestingly different from modern cookies or breads. They are flatter and chewier and a bit harder. These were sweet enough, and the flavors were good, but next time I make them I will put some salt in them, because I think they needed a bit of balance, and salt would heighten their flavors. Andrew liked them and the kids liked them, so that seemed like a pretty good success rate.

As Andrew explained above, these would have been luxury goods, indicated by several of the ingredients--sugar, spices, saffron, and sherry. And they would have been perceived to be healthful, since the ingredients had "medicinal" purposes. So, in effect, rich people handing out soul cakes around Allhallowtide would be like rich people today handing out little goodie bags of Whole Foods protein bars full of acai berries and artisanal honey or something, I think. (I wonder if kids today would even eat Halloween candy they thought was meant to be healthy??)

What Is the Flavor of Soul? (a FREE! book day)

For someone who grew up not really liking Halloween, I seem to write a lot of Halloween flavored stuff. There's the whole disastrous trick-or-treating escapade in The House on the Corner and, then, there's "Soul Cakes." Not to mention all kinds of other creepy stuff I've done or am doing.

But back to "Soul Cakes"!

If you pay attention to the cover for "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?", you'll notice that "Soul Cakes" is included. Yes, it's a pair of novelettes, and they are some of my favorite stories. In my mind, they're just fun. I won't lie, though, and try to say that some people haven't been unsettled by them.

Oh, well.

Anyway...

Just in time for Halloween, "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?" is FREE! And, hey, you can't beat FREE! Seriously, pick them up and give them a read.

And be ready for the man and his cat to be back very soon. Very.
And with an actual name.
Sort of.

What are you waiting for? Click the link and go get your FREE! book!
Creepy days are here, but they're almost over.

Soul Cakes

Last year, I wrote a story called "Soul Cakes" which appears with "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?"

and is set in the same universe.

A soul cake is a real thing. A few hundred years ago, they were a common Halloween "treat" that, as my wife says, the 1% would hand out to the poor to make themselves feel better. Seriously, the poor and orphans would go door to door (or whatever passed for that at the time) and collect soul cakes. Eating one was supposed to  deliver a soul from perdition. It's a tradition that has passed out of style.

[The subtle reader may gain a valuable insight into the main character of the Tea Kettle world by paying attention to the whole soul cake thing in the story.]

However, in style or not, we decided to make some! Which means, I wanted to make some, so my wife did! Hey, I shopped and roasted the walnuts! But, um, she really did all the rest. Here's a photo story of the process:

Yum! Souls taste good!

To celebrate "Soul Cake" day, I'm running a special deal on "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?"! From now through Halloween, It's less than a buck! That's right, for just $0.99, you can pick up two great stories! And eat some souls. Don't let this deal pass you by.

What Time Is the Tea Kettle?

"What Time Is the Tea Kettle?"

So I'm not much into promotion, even self-promotion; however, when I have a new product out, I figure I ought to at least mention it. Speaking of which, my new thing is out! Actually, it's two things. Two novelettes about the same character and his cat. I posted an excerpt from it quite a while back on a different site, so I'll give you that same taste in a moment. I'd call this new story whimsical. Definitely offbeat.

Bryan Pedas, from A Beer for the Shower, put together the spectacular cover, and I think he captured the feel of the story pretty well. He called it "absurdist" rather in the same vein as Carroll's Wonderland. Did you know that there's no real category for that? Well, there's not.

Briane Pagel, who also got an early look, said it's "perfect."

And my students, who also got to hear the excerpt, can't wait to find out what happens to Jeffry and what's up with the tea kettle.

I'm just going to say it: If you've liked anything I've written, this is one you should read.

PLUS! Not only do you get "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?" but you also get "Soul Cakes"! A second novelette featuring Jeffry and his owner. That's two for the price of one! Seriously, go pick up your copy, read it, love it, and leave a review!

Just to help you on the way, here is a bit of "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?"

The red tea kettle was blocking my view of the clock. It kept doing that. I sighed as I rolled over and sat up in bed. It was new and hadn't yet learned its place, so I picked it up by the handle and carried it out of the bedroom, down the darkened hall, and into the kitchen, only once stepping on one of the cat's toys, quite an accomplishment. I flicked the little stove light on and set the kettle on the counter.

What time was it again? That was when I realized that I'd forgotten to check the time after I picked up the kettle, so I glanced at the stove clock in the dim light of the kitchen to find it blocked by the red tea kettle, handle up so that I couldn't read the time. I glanced over to the counter top where I was sure I had just set it, but, yes, it was not there. I sighed again, shook my head slightly, and picked the tea kettle back up, looking for somewhere else to set it. It needed a place, its own place, to be. Maybe, then, it would quit wandering around.

I could put it in a cupboard, but that would just be inconvenient, having to get it in and out all of the time. I wanted it to live on the stove but on the burner where it wouldn't block the clock.

Oh! The clock. I wanted to know the time. I looked over at the clock, and there was the tea kettle again. Hadn't it just been in my hand? I was sure I hadn't set it down.

I reached for it again, but, at that moment, the cat floated by, ghostlike, doing whatever it is that cats do at night. He brushed my cheek with his tail as he lightly pressed one paw onto my shoulder as he passed by. Looking for flying bugs, I supposed.

His sudden spring to the ceiling almost caught me by surprise, and I saw him going for the spider in the corner where the ceiling met both walls on that side of the dining room that adjoined the kitchen.

“Geoffrey!”

The cat stiffened, caught in the act, but he couldn't stop like he would have been able to if he'd been on the floor. He looked back over his shoulder at me and “mew”ed just as he collided with the ceiling and bounced to the wall, grabbing hold with his claws.

The spider scurried into the crack where the two pieces of trim met. I could see him peeking out but was too far away to hear the cursing that I was sure was happening. Spiders like very much to curse. Most of them, anyway. Tarantulas are above that sort of thing. Or so they say.

The cat arched his back and, then, marched down the wall studiously ignoring me as I scolded him, “Geoffrey, what have I told you about the spiders? We leave the spiders alone. Spiders are good.” I spoke slowly and distinctly, as if he was hard of hearing, which, honestly, at that moment, he was.

When he got close enough, he leaped from the wall to the dining table and sat like the puff of smoke he had originally been named for.

I sighed and shook my head at the cat, thinking back to the small, gray puffball he'd been when he'd shown up on my doorstep. Like a puff of smoke when you blow out a match or a candle. All except for the toes on his front paws, which were white. I had determined to call him Smoke and actually had for a number of weeks.

Until my nephew came to visit.

He's my sister's kid. We don't ever see each other, my sister and me, unless she needs something. That particular day, she had needed me to babysit, her usual reason for seeing me, so she had dropped my nephew off at an obscene hour on a Saturday morning. A time when normal people are still sleeping. My nephew came in asking, “What's for lunch?”

I told him it was too early for lunch, to which he replied, “Actually, it's late for lunch. At school, it's already nap time.”

I grumbled and went to grub around in the kitchen and look for food.

He met the cat while I was trying to find slices of leftover pizza that I could pick enough of the mushrooms off of that it would convince him to pretend they weren't really there to begin with.

“Warm or cold?” I shouted out into the room with the TV that only worked three days a week.

“Cold's fine.”

“It's going to the table, then. Why don't you bring Smoke, and you can feed him some treats while we're eating.”

That's the great thing about pizza: I was about to have it for breakfast, and my nephew was having it for lunch, and we were both perfectly satisfied that all was right with the world with that arrangement.

He plopped the kitten down on the table in much the same spot as he was currently sitting and eyeing me sullenly for the scolding.

As I dropped several cat treats into the boy's hand, he said, “Why do you call him Smoke?”

“That's his name.”

“No, it's not.” He said it very matter-of-factly, very like when he had said, “At school, it's already nap time.”

That was annoying. I wasn't even awake yet. No pizza. No coffee. And less than four hours of sleep. “Yes, it is. I named him that.”

He looked at the cat, held out the hand with the treats, and cocked his head slightly as the cat took one and sat down with it.

“He says he already has a name, and he doesn't like Smoke.”

“What's wrong with Smoke?”

The boy shrugged, “I don't know. He says he doesn't like it.”

“Why didn't he tell me, then?” I raised one eyebrow at the kid, thinking I'd won.

He glanced back at the kitten and offered him another treat. The pizza, his slice and mine, was just sitting there on our plates waiting to be eaten, making me cranky, while my nephew chastised me on behalf of the ball of fur that looked like it was about to drift away.

“He says he did tell you. He says you don't listen.”

“I do, too, listen.” I crossed my arms, thinking back, trying to figure out if I'd been listening. I wasn't sure, and that made me more cranky, because the kid might be right.

“If you listened, you'd know his name is Jeffry.”

“Jeffry?” I blinked, stared at the kid, and picked up my slice of pizza. Just to make a statement by doing it. “What kind of name is Jeffry for a cat?”

The small shoulders of the boy shrugged as he took a bite of his pizza, “I don't know. I just know that's his name.”

I waved my pizza in the air, “I like Smoke better.”

With his mouth stuffed, barely comprehensible, he replied, “He doesn't like Smoke.”

“So. He's my cat.” I obstinately took a bite of my pizza.

The cat made a cat noise, not quite a meow, that I didn't catch. I should have, but it sounded jumbled.

After a moment of chewing, the boy said, “Jeffry says he'll call you Bob.”

“But my name's not...” I ripped a big hunk of pizza off with my teeth and sent it spluttering everywhere as I said, “Fine!” After I swallowed, I added, “Geoffrey, it is.” Internally, I smiled, knowing that neither of them could spell so couldn't tell that I had given the cat a name I wanted to give him anyway.

As the cat sat on the table and stared at me, I wasn't entirely sure he hadn't known all along. Cats always look like they have secrets, even when they don't. Who knows what was going on in that cat's head.

I saw the spider creeping back out of the crack in the ceiling, and I glanced up at it, “You leave that spider alone.”

The cat stood up, turned, and lifted its tail to me as it hopped off of the table, drifting off through the house but near the floor this time.

I stood there a moment in the arbitrary division between the kitchen and dining room completely unaware of what I was doing. Why I was up. What time it even was.

Oh! The time! I turned back to the stove, and there was the red tea kettle again blocking the clock. I grabbed the tea kettle and jerked it from the stove. 1:16 glowed dimly in green on the little panel on the back of the stove where the knobs are, and I stood there staring at the readout. I didn't even remember why I'd wanted to know what time it was. Or why I was awake...

Why was I awake? Something had woken me up. That's why I had been trying to look at the time. Oh, well. I had no idea what it was, if I had ever known at all. What I did know is that I was going back to bed.

I sighed and raised the red tea kettle up to eye level, “But what do I do with you?” I yawned, shook my head, and set the tea pot back down on the stove. I'd figure it out later.