Simnel Cake
Below is an article about the dessert known as Simnel Cake:
SIMNEL CAKE
While perusing the YouTube channel, I came across a video that conveyed how to make a dessert called Simnel Cake. What I found interesting about this channel is that it centered around Victorian cuisine. Yet, after reading about the dish, I discovered that it dated back far longer than the 19th century.
Simnel Cake is a fruitcake eaten in the United Kingdom, Ireland and other countries associated with them. The dessert is usually eaten during Lent and the Easter holiday. Simnel Cake consists of layers of almond paste or marzipan, typically one in the middle and one on top, and a set of eleven balls made of the same paste concoction. Simnel Cake was originally made for the fourth Sunday in Lent, also known as Laetare Sunday, the Refreshment Sunday of Lent (when the 40-day fast would be relaxed), Mothering Sunday, the Sunday of the Five Loaves, or Simnel Sunday; named after the cake. In the United Kingdom it is now commonly associated with Easter Sunday. The eleven marzipan balls used to decorate the cake's surface, symbolized Jesus Christ's twelve apostles. minus Judas Iscariot. The twelve balls sometimes represented Jesus and the eleven apostles. However, an early reference to the cake's marzipan balls decoration appeared in May Byron's "Pot-Luck Cookery", but with no mention of the apostle story.
Many believe the Simnel Cake dates back to the Medieval era. The bread regulations of the time suggest they may have been boiled and then baked - a technique that led to an invention myth, in circulation from at least 1745 until the 1930s. Some believe the change in the cake's preparation originated with a mythical couple from 19th century Shropshire named Simon and Nelly, quarreled over making a Simnel Cake. One had wished to boil it and the other to bake it. After beating each other with various household implements, they compromise on one which uses both cooking techniques.
The Simnel Cake has been associated with Mothering Sunday, also known as Simnel Sunday. According to historian Ronald Hutton, the custom of live-in apprentices and domestic servants going home to visit their mothers on Mothering Sunday started in 17th Century Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. These servants usually left to check on their families and took food or money, if needed. Food stocks were usually low during Mothering Sunday and the high-calorie Simnel Cake proved to be useful as much needed nutrition. The cake later became associated solely with Easter Sunday.
Many claimed the definition for the word "simnel" remains unclear. There is a 1226 reference to "bread made into a simnel", which is understood to mean the finest white bread from the Latin simila, "fine flour" (from which 'semolina' also derives). The medieval scholar John de Garlande felt that the word was equivalent to placenta cake, a layered cake from ancient Greece and Rome. But according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word "simnel" meant a bun or bread of fine wheat flour.
Below is a recipe for "Simnel Cake" from the BBC Good Food website:
Simnel Cake
Ingredients:
*250g mixed dried fruit (a mixture of sultanas, currants, raisins and candied mixed peel)
*1 orange, zested and juiced
*500g pack marzipan
*250g pack butter, softened
*200g light brown soft sugar
*4 eggs, plus 1 beaten to glaze
*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
*3 tbsp apricot jam
Preparations:
STEP 1
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. Alternatively, heat gently in a pan, stirring now and then until the liquid has been absorbed and leave to cool.
STEP 2
Heat oven to 150C (300 degrees)/130C fan/gas 2 (300 farenheit). Roll out a third of the marzipan and use the base of a deep 20cm cake tin as a template to cut out a circle. Wrap any offcuts and the remaining two-thirds of marzipan and set aside for later. Butter and line the cake tin with a double layer of parchment. 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) and mix until well combined. Mix in the cooled soaked dried fruit and fold in the cherries.
STEP 3
Scrape half the cake mixture into the tin. Top with the disc of marzipan, then the remaining cake mixture, and level the top with a spatula. Bake for 2 hrs. Check it’s cooked by inserting a skewer to the centre (center) of the cake, if any wet mixture clings to the skewer, return to the oven for another 10 mins, then check again. Cool in the tin for 15 mins, then turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
STEP 4
Brush the top of the cake with apricot jam. Roll out half of the remaining marzipan and use the base of the cake as a template to cut out another disc. Place it on top of the cake and crimp the edges, if you like. Roll the remaining marzipan into 11 equal-sized balls for the apostles. Brush the marzipan with beaten egg and arrange the apostles in a circle on top around the outside and brush them with a little egg too. Put under a hot grill for a minute or two until just starting to caramelize - be very careful as the marzipan will burn easily. Leave to cool and wrap a ribbon around the cake, if you like. Will keep for up to a week in a sealed tin.