Just Give Me A Raisin

Halloween is here.

Turn off the lights, put out your jack-o’-lantern, load up on miniature Mars Bars - it’s time for marauding groups of disguised children to demand sweets from strangers.

And what do we get in return?

Nothing!

No songs, no rhymes, no praying for your soul.

Not even a rapping horse’s head.

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We may think of trick-or-treating as a modern imported tradition from our American friends, but its origins actually lie in medieval England. Souling is a practice that goes back at least 1000 years and, like all good traditions, is based around food. Over Allhallowtide, soulers, usually children and the poor, would go to local houses and beg for soul cakes. In return, they would sing songs and say prayers for the givers and their families:

God have your soul, bones and all.

There are varying recipes for soul cakes, but they all include dried fruit. One recipe, by Elinor Fettiplace, is from 1604:

Take flower & sugar & nutmeg & cloves & mace & sweet butter & sack & a little ale barm, 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 or fruit.

Traditionally, soul cakes have a cross inscribed on the top. Similar to hot cross buns, the cross originally meant that these biscuits were given out as alms.

Souling began to die out as a result of educational reform in the 1890s, and the last recorded incidences of it happening as a common practice are from the 1950s.

But not for long!

Trick-or-treating re-entered the UK in the 1980s, largely due to the release of the film E.T.. The US import of trick-or-treating may be more about costumes and less about communion, but they both stem from the same root: children wanting sweets.

If you’re looking for a seasonal treat that’s more heritage than Haribo, here’s a fun-filled (rather than fun-sized) recipe for you to try at home.

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Soul Cakes

• 100g butter

• 100g caster sugar

• 200g flour

• 1 tsp baking powder

• pinch of salt

• 1 egg yolk, beaten

• 1/4 tsp cinnamon

• 1/4 tsp mace

• 1/4 tsp ginger

• 80g raisins

  
  

  Preheat the oven to 190’C.

  
  

  Sift together the flour, baking powder, spices, and salt. Cream together the butter and sugar, then add the sifted flour mixture. Add the raisins and egg yolk, then mix until it forms a soft, rollable dough.

  
  

  Roll out the dough thinly, then cut into rounds. Cut a cross into the top of each round with a sharp knife.

  
  

  Place the rounds onto a greased baking sheet, and bake for 10 - 12 minutes.

  
  

  Give them out to trick-or-treaters - if they last that long.