Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

gur cake a type of fruit slice, associated particularly with Dublin city, and made with stale bread and cakes. The stale ingredients are mixed with raisins and water and spread over a puff pastry base and baked on a large baking sheet. After baking a layer of icing sugar is placed on top and the cake is cut into squares.

The cake was popular amongst young Dublin children and is remembered fondly by the well-known Dublin celebrity éamonn Mac Thomáis, in his book Gur Cake and Coal Blocks.

As we came out of the shop we were stuffing ourselves with the Gur Cake. It was only gorgeous, steaming hot, with sugar-coated pastry and the juice oozing out of the large currants and the other soft brown stuff. We could feel our bellies heating up.