(ice) cake

noun, ice pan | ‘ice pan’: a slab of floating ice (COD)

“Oh god, some of that ice was three foot thick when I was a young lad. I saw it. And the cakes, took a good man to handle those cakes.”

“My mother and dad had went someplace. I don’t know where they went. We came home from school and the ice was all broke up in cakes along the shore. We were out jumping ice cakes. They weren’t very happy about that.”

“Usually the ice around the ice hole could be a foot deep, but there’d be a big clear water. But anyway, we always carried a rope on the horse, on the sleigh, two ropes, one for each person. So Dad took the one rope, and I took the other to hold the horse’s head up and to get him out. ’Cause you’d have to kind of play him out and then roll him out. But anyway, he had the ropes on him, but the cake of ice that I was on broke off, and I went into the ice hole.”

“We never cut any of that ice. Later years, they used to just cut it in the harbour here. We did, and we’d just put a slide right up into the ice house.”
“They have pulleys on it?”
“Yeah, pulley up in the ice house and pull the cake straight up in with a horse or tractor.”

“Yeah, it was floating on ice cake, eh.”