Hello everybody, it is John, welcome to my recipe site. Today, I’m gonna show you how to prepare a distinctive dish, simnel cake. It is one of my favorites food recipes. This time, I am going to make it a little bit tasty. This will be really delicious.
Simnel cake is one of the most favored of recent trending foods on earth. It is simple, it’s quick, it tastes delicious. It is enjoyed by millions every day. They are nice and they look fantastic. Simnel cake is something which I’ve loved my whole life.
Simnel cake is a light fruitcake that is an Easter classic and is often associated with Mother's Day. Simnel cake is a light fruitcake formerly eaten during the pre- Easter period in the United Kingdom, Ireland and some other countries but has become a traditional cake for Easter Sunday. It is distinguished by two layers of almond paste or marzipan, one in the middle and one on top. If the cake is browning too quickly, cover with foil after an hour of baking.
To begin with this particular recipe, we have to prepare a few ingredients. You can cook simnel cake using 30 ingredients and 10 steps. Here is how you cook that.
The ingredients needed to make Simnel cake:
- Take For the marzipan:
- Take 100 g ground almonds
- Prepare 100 g icing sugar, plus extra to dust
- Get 2 free-range egg yolks
- Take 2 tbsp. lemon juice
- Prepare For the cake:
- Take 5 tbsp. milk
- Prepare 1 good pinch of saffron
- Take 150 g raisins
- Make ready 150 g sultanas
- Take 40 g brandy, vin santo or white rum
- Make ready 50 g bleached almonds
- Get 175 g plain flour
- Prepare 1 tsp baking powder
- Prepare 45 g ground almonds
- Take 1/2 tsp fine salt
- Make ready 2 tsp mixed spice
- Make ready 180 g butter, at room temperature
- Prepare 180 g soft, light brown sugar
- Prepare 3 eggs
- Take 1 tbsp. golden syrup
- Prepare zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
- Get 50 g glacé cherries, halved
- Prepare 50 g mixed peel
- Prepare apricot jam, to brush over the cake
- Take For the icing:
- Prepare 30 g caster sugar
- Prepare 25 g butter
- Make ready 20 g lemon juice
- Take 110 g icing sugar
Spoon half of this mixture into the bottom of the cake tin and level it off so it's as flat as possible. The simnel cake is a classic cake for Easter appears sometime around the end of Lent. The cake signifies the end of Lent which is a period of fasting and repentance culminating in a feast of seasonal and symbolic foods. A Simnel cake is essentially a fruit cake - lighter in colour than the very dark Christmas cake, but still packed to the rafters with assorted dried fruits.
Instructions to make Simnel cake:
- Put the raisins and sultanas in a mixing bowl or a small zip lock bag. Heat up the spirits to almost boiling, pour it into the fruit and mix well. Seal the bag or cover the bowl and leave for a few hours, best overnight, to soak.
- Butter and line with parchment a 20cm deep cake tin. Prepare another disc of parchment the size of the tin to place on top of the cake, to stop it from burning. Preheat the oven to 150C/300F/gas 2.
- Warm up the milk and put the saffron strands into it to soak. Toast the almonds in a dry frying pan or in hot oven on a baking tray for 10-15 minutes until they turn golden. Cool and chop roughly.
- Mix the flour with the baking powder, ground almonds, salt and mixed spice and put to one side. Beat the butter in an electric mixer, add the sugar and beat well until the mixture turns pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating continuously, alternating with a little flour mix. Beat in the rest of the flour, golden syrup, zest and the milk with saffron.
- Drain the soaked fruit if necessary – but all the liquid should have been absorbed. Stir them into the cake batter together with the chopped almonds, peel and glace cherries.
- Take the marzipan out of the fridge and roll it out on a surface dusted with icing sugar to a disc the size of your tin. Spoon half the cake batter into the tin, place the marzipan disc in and spoon the rest of the cake mix on top.
- Smooth the surface with a spatula and place the parchment disc on top.
- Bake the cake for about 1 ¾ - 2 hours until a skewer inserted in the middle (not too deep because of the marzipan layer) comes out clean. Cool in the tin, unmould and brush the top and sides with the apricot jam warmed up slightly in a small pan.
- To make the icing, bring the butter, caster sugar and lemon juice to the boiling point then pour over the icing sugar. Whisk to a smooth paste, add some yellow food colouring for extra Easter cheer.
- Spread the icing over the top of the cake with a palette knife, making sure no crumbs mix into the icing and spoil the effect. Leave to set.
The cake signifies the end of Lent which is a period of fasting and repentance culminating in a feast of seasonal and symbolic foods. A Simnel cake is essentially a fruit cake - lighter in colour than the very dark Christmas cake, but still packed to the rafters with assorted dried fruits. The cake is baked with a layer of marzipan in the middle, which adds an extra gooey moistness when cooked. Shrewsbury's simnel cake, famous in its day, was a rich plum cake in the centre, covered in a crust made from flour, saffron and water. It was boiled for several hours, brushed with egg and baked.
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