Easter Simnel Cake

Easter is coming soon and with it a lot of wonderful and great recipes like this Easter Simnel Cake from the UK. I couldn’t wait for these dates to arrive to share this marvel with you. Not only because it is an easy recipe to make, but also because the result is a sensational cake… If you like Fruit Cakes- Cake aux fruits or fruit sponge cakes like Mary Berry’s, this one will blow your mind.

As it usually happens to me with these recipes, I fell in love. To infinity. And the more information I looked for about it, the more I liked it. I found some absolutely spectacular designs. Way beyond the top circle and the 11 marzipan balls. In fact, the cake that I left you, is inspired by the one from Marks & Spencer which was, without a doubt, the one I liked the most of all.

This fruit cake, Simnel Cake, is one of the most mysterious traditional pastries in the UK.

According to historian Annie Gray – “The Simnel Cake is the subject of legends, in fact, most of them totally unfounded”.

It is a sponge cake dominated by dried fruit and based on four quarters sponge cake, same amount of sugar, flour, eggs and butter. It is also seasoned with spices, citrus zest and even Brandy, if desired. The peculiarity of this cake, in addition to the top layer of marzipan is another layer of marzipan inside, right in the middle of the cake, which is baked together with the batter.

Top decoration includes 11 marzipan balls representing the apostles, excluding Judas. The traditional way is to toast the marzipan, either with the oven grill or with a blowtorch. In my case, I hope the more traditional ones will forgive me, since I didn’t like the final finish by toasting it, I decided to brush it with unsweetened cocoa powder to simulate that finish.

On the other hand, I have modified the traditional recipe a bit, adjusting it to my personal taste. In addition, I decided to reduce the final amount of sugar because it seemed excessive and, when I tasted it, I did not find it pleasant. It was very cloying and tiring to eat.

Simnel Cake origin.

This incredible fruit and marzipan cake dates back several centuries, although the version we enjoy today is very different from the original recipe.

Museum curator Emma Heslewood, who writes The Cake Historian blog, states the following:

“There are other versions of Simnel Cake, different from the original, because in the beginning it was a fruit loaf. All cakes started out as sweet breads and then evolved into textured cakes when plantations made sugar more readily available. Before that, people could use very little honey or fruit.”

The competition for being the home of the Simnel cake is very close. There are three places in contention and, although their recipes differ quite a bit, they all agree on omitting milk and butter, ingredients forbidden during Lent.

Types of simnel.

The first is the Shrewsbury simnel, a pie made from plums and covered with a crisp crust made with flour, saffron and water. The saffron adds a characteristic and peculiar yellow color. It was boiled for several hours in a mold, like a Christmas pudding (some time ago I let you how to make it, it’s too old so is in Spanish), then covered with the dough, brushed with egg and baked, resulting in a firm pie with a long shelf life.

Heslewood says, “Shrewsbury is the earliest cake on record, but really it could have been from anywhere, as everyone was making their own sweet breads and cakes.”

Second type is Devizes star simnel, a star-shaped cake made with currants and lemon peel, colored with saffron, baked and glazed. The Wiltshire Heritage Museum preserves an original recipe for the local version.

The third comes from the town of Bury, in Lancashire, and is the closest to today’s Simnel. It is made with walnuts, cherries and citrus peel, covered with marzipan and decorated with sugar balls. The city proudly promulgated its cake in the 19th century, even presenting a 32 kg (70 lb) Simnel to Queen Victoria in 1863, perhaps for that reason it has become the most popular and traditional.

Today it is not common to find this cake made with saffron. It is said that it is possible that some stingy chefs substituted this spice for allspice, since it was much cheaper.

Another difference in its preparation is that, in the past, the cake was boiled and then baked, while nowadays, it is baked and then browned under the grill.

What is the meaning behind the word “Simnel”?

There are some strange and fascinating theories about the origin of this cake’s name. One of the funniest is a 19th century tale about an elderly couple named Simon and Nell.

It is said that the creation of this cake, came from leftover Christmas ingredients that the elderly couple used to make a cake for spring. A problem arose as to how to go about baking the cake and the two argued over what to do with the dough; Simon wanted to boil it and Nell wanted to bake it.

They came to an agreement, decided to do both and their invention gave rise to the name, Sim-Nell.

Other legends suggest that the cake owes its name to Lambert Simnel, a pretender to the throne in the time of Henry VII. Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskellreferred to this unlikely theory in a letter to a friend in 1838, in which she recounted memories of her childhood eating Simnel Cake on Mothering Sunday in Knutsford, Cheshire.

The truth is actually much more vulgar. Simnel probably comes from the Latin word “simila” meaning fine wheat flour. The cake’s ancestor, simnel bread, was on the British menu as early as the 11th century.

According to an entry in the Winchester Annals of the year 1042.

Edward the Confessor ordered that, whenever he or his successors wore the crown at Winchester, Worcester or Westminster, the local abbey should receive him with “a hundred simnels and a wine barrel.”

Similarly, the Chronicle of the Battle of the Abbey, which was completed in the early 12th century, records that, after founding the monastery, William the Conqueror left the monks “a memorial of his affection, by appropriating for their daily use bread fit for the royal table, which is commonly called simenel.”

In the year 1266, Henry III decreed that “bread made as simnel” was of such exceptional quality that it “should weigh two shillings less than wasted bread.”

However, in the early 13th century, the word “simnel” was also used to designate a type of cake. In his dictionary (circa 1225), John de Garland explains that simineus was the French word for Latin placenta. This was a kind of cake that was displayed in store windows to attract the attention of hungry students at the University of Paris. A passage in Cato the Elder’s De agricultura suggests that, in ancient Rome, placenta (cake) was made from semolina dough, cheese and honey, although it is not known whether it was made in the same way in medieval France.

How did the Simnel become a traditional Easter cake?

Simnel is consumed mainly in the United Kingdom and in countries with a Christian population descended from British and Irish immigrants. It was originally associated with Lenten festivities, including the fourth Sunday (known as Laetare Sunday), which also coincides with Mother’s Day Sunday. But, nowadays, this cake is consumed during Easter.

Today, Mother’s Day, is considered a celebration of mothers, but in Tudor times it was a rare day off for servants to visit their “mother”, church, if they could, bringing her cakes and flowers as gifts.

Historian Pen Vogler, author of Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain, says that simnel cake was prepared for the occasion, which was a welcome respite after the fasting season. He notes that the poet Robert Herrick wrote in 1648, “I’ll to thee a simnel bring, Gainst though go’st a mothering.”

However, Dr Annie Gray, panelist on Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet and author of The Official Downton Abbey Cookbook, believes that much of the symbolism around the simnel cake is mythology, going back to the Victorians who were fascinated by telling “tall tales”. He believes the connection to Mother’s Day is fairly current, while marzipan balls didn’t become fashionable until the 1970s, after appearing briefly in the Edwardian era.

Heslewood agrees that the Victorians had a lot to do with fixing the “cake calendar.”

He says, “The 19th century was the heyday of pie consumption, where recipes became more formally established, as with Mrs. Beeton, and pies became traditions with the calendar.”

This is an example of how such a humble preparation, such as a fruit loaf, has evolved over the years into such an incredibly aromatic, tasty and aesthetically beautiful cake.