Have you ever had leftover fruit cake that you are at a loss what to do with? I always make a Christmas cake and end up with heaps leftover, which sits sad and neglected in a dark corner of my cupboard. Given that fruit cake is not cheap to make, you don't want to throw it away. Today, I have one solution for what to do with that stale fruit cake - the Chester Square!
Chester squares are a memory from my childhood. Certain bakeries in my regional hometown made Chester squares, which were pieces of shortcrust pastry filled with a pitch black filling made of treacle and crumbled stale cake, and topped with bright pink buttercream icing. I haven't seen them anywhere else - perhaps making Chester squares is a "country" habit?
Alas, I have not yet found a recipe for Chester squares that gives me the same aesthetic result or quite the same flavour, but I have found an alternative that uses golden syrup. I used this recipe for the pastry and this recipe for the filling, and made it in a 20cm by 30cm slice (bar) tin. Instead of sugaring the top of my Chester squares, I iced them with lemon icing - not quite the pink buttercream of my childhood, but close enough.
The end result, as I mentioned, is not the soft squidgy black cake of my memory, but it is still pretty good. Although it is a bit of a faff to make, it's a great way to serve fruit cake in a different way if it has gone stale or you are just sick of fruit cake.
Fortunately, there's never any leftover fruit cake because my husband loves the stuff. I'd never heard of Chester squares before. I wonder why they are named that?
ReplyDeleteI had heard of Chester Squares but never had them or even known quite what they were. I am not a big fan of fruit cake but these do look good.
ReplyDeleteWowo i love the idea of using left over fruit cakes for making this not that i have left overs here. Looks so good.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of these. They look tasty!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea to add some icing to fruit cake to give them new life. Your chester squares look really good.
ReplyDeleteI am not familiar with the name but I think I know the sort of slice you mean - I am racking my brains to think what it was called when I saw it - actually my mum made a similar one but I don't think it was old fruit cake in it - though I love the idea
ReplyDeleteI didn't know about the left over cake, I thought it was just fruit, but I loved them. My mum called them sinkers.
ReplyDeleteI ended up with a recipe from Celtnet.org an English cooking site. Basically I revised it to how they are made in Adelaide South Australia bakeries and almost got the same taste. None the bakeries will give me the recipe even though I can only buy them from 1 bakery now if I don't have any spare stale cake but that's now changed
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