Traditional Simnel Cake

I would like to share with you a family recipe for a traditional Simnel Cake.

Simnel cakes have been around since the Middle Ages and are predominantly eaten in the UK and Ireland during Easter week, or sometimes for Mothering Sunday (the Sunday halfway between the start of Lent and Easter).

In the 19th century, girls “in service” used to bake them for their mothers and take them with them on a rare trip home. It is a traditional fruit cake with marzipan in the middle and on top; and if you wish to adhere to religious tradition you can place 11 marzipan balls on top of the cake to represent the 12 apostles minus Judas. Some add an extra ball to represent Jesus.

Our family recipe was adapted from Mrs Beeton’s.

Ingredients:

A: 200 g plain flour, 0.5 teaspoon of baking powder, 0.5 teaspoon salt

B: 150 g butter, 150 g caster sugar (we like to use the Dutch ‘bruine basterdsuiker’ for this)

4 eggs (use large ones if you can get them)

C: 150 g glacé cherries, halved, 125 g currants, 150 g sultanas (we use ‘blanke rozijen’), 150 g raisins and 50 g mixed peel if you like it (we don’t).

50 g ground almonds

500 g marzipan (store bought or homemade, or homemade almond paste, as you wish)

apricot jam to glaze

Method:

Sift the A ingredients together into a bowl.
Use a mixer to cream the B ingredients together and then add the eggs and beat some more.
Fold A and C and the ground almonds into the butter/sugar/eggs mixture.
Pour half the mixture into a greased, round cake tin (anything between 16-20 cm diameter is fine).
Place a layer of marzipan (around 1 cm thick, roughly a third of your marzipan) on top. Pile the rest of the cake mixture on top of that and smooth out the top, leaving a dip in the middle.
Bake for 1 hour at 180 degrees in a pre-heated oven, then reduce the oven to 160 degrees and bake for about 90 minutes more. Cover the cake with tinfoil for the last half hour if you feel it is starting to look burnt around the edges. Cool in the tin and then turn out onto wire rack.
Once cool, glaze with some warmed apricot jam. Divide your leftover marzipan in half. Roll out a 1 cm thick circle and place it on top of the cake. With the rest of the marzipan make the 11 balls for example. We leave it plain, but you can also glaze the marzipan with egg and grill briefly, or add decorations with white icing, glacé cherries, Easter motif decorations etc. Eet smakelijk!

If your child has an Easter breakfast/lunch/brunch at school or you are having guests over, consider a Bavarian Easter loaf (Osterpinze), or chocolate/cornflake bird’s nests as well as Easter cookies to enhance the celebrations. Recipes and inspiration abound on the internet.