Simnel cake is a fruit cake with a marzipan topping, decorated with 11 marzipan balls representing the 11 apostles (without Judas). It is traditionally made during the seasons of Lent and Easter, often for Mothering Sunday.
And … remember the Black Shuck? Any day now, he and other mythical creatures will be invading your personal space. Read all about it further down.
Coming from a family that has always taken both Easter and baking seriously, it is perhaps surprising that it took me until my seventh decade (!) to have a go at one myself. And I owe this to East Anglia Bylines; the cake came up in a discussion of Easter themed articles, and I leaped in where angels fear to tread…
I then had to find a recipe. This wasn’t difficult, as there were at least several dozen on the web. The one I picked came from BBC Good Food; it is repeated below with a few of my own tweaks. I have to say that the marzipan proved surprisingly difficult to locate, but it seems to be readily available in large, relatively up-market supermarkets. (Am I allowed to mention Waitrose?) [Yes you are. – Ed]
Ingredients
- 250g mixed dried fruit – any, but do include some candied mixed peel if you can
- 1 orange, zested and juiced
- 500g marzipan
- 250g butter, softened
- 200g light brown soft sugar
- 4 eggs
- 175g plain flour
- 100g ground almonds
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 lemon, zested
- 2 tsp mixed spice
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 100g glacé cherries, halved (optional)
- Apricot jam
Method
- Put the mixed dried fruit in a bowl with the orange juice and zest and 2 tbsp water. Cover and microwave for 2 mins, then leave to cool completely. You could heat in a pan on the stove if you don’t have a microwave, but it takes longer.
- Pre-heat oven to 150C/130C fan/gas 2.
- Butter and line a 20cm cake tin with a double layer of parchment. (I used a 18cm tin as it was the largest I had. It worked well but produced rather a tall cake!)
- Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Add the eggs, flour, almonds, baking powder, lemon zest, mixed spice and vanilla (all in one go – it seems odd, but it works) and mix until well combined. Mix in the cooled soaked dried fruit and fold in the cherries if you are using them.
- [Optional: roll out a third of the marzipan and cut a circle of it round the cake tin. If you do this, it goes in the tin on top of half the cake mixture, before you put it in the oven. I missed this bit out, as I thought it would make the cake rather heavy.]
- Pour the cake mixture in the tin, adding the disc of marzipan halfway if you are including it. Level the top and bake for 2 hours. Check that it’s done by inserting a skewer into the centre; if any mixture clings to it, give the cake another 10 minutes. (Mine needed the extra time.)
- Cool the cake on a wire rack for 15 minutes before removing it from its tin and then leave to cool completely.
- When it is cool, decorate with more marzipan. Brush the top with the apricot jam, roll out a disc the same size as the cake and place it on top. Then make 11 equal-sized marzipan balls to represent the apostles and scatter them around the edge of the cake, holding each in place with beaten egg if you have any or some more apricot jam.
- You can put the finished cake to caramelise under a hot grill if you like, but you have to be very careful not to let it burn.
Note that BBC Good Food says that this recipe serves 12. How to cut a cake with 11 similar decorations equally spaced around its rim into 12 beats me. I reckon it serves 11…
(Optionally) find ten friends – and enjoy! This one was judged to be “moist, crumbly and subtly spiced.”
A new stamp for East Anglia
Royal Mail’s latest set of special stamps launches today, Thursday 27 March, and it’s a nice one for us in the East. The Myths and Legends issue includes Black Shuck, the hellhound first reported in Peterborough in 1127. Its best documented exploits were in Bungay and Blythborough in 1577 but the myth still echoes. Celina Błędowska reported on it for East Anglia Bylines in August 2023.
Another stamp features Beowulf and Grendall. The East Anglian link is rather more tenuous, but if any region of England can lay claim to Beowulf, it’s us. Although set in Scandinavia, Beowulf was almost certainly written in England. Various clues point to our part of the world. The similarity of the funeral rites described and the Sutton Hoo burial is one. Another is close ties between the Scandinavian royal house, the Wuffingas, and East Anglia.
