Hello everybody, it is John, welcome to my recipe page. Today, I will show you a way to prepare a distinctive dish, simnel cake. One of my favorites. For mine, I’m gonna make it a little bit unique. This is gonna smell and look delicious.
Simnel cake is one of the most popular of recent trending meals on earth. It is appreciated by millions every day. It is easy, it is fast, it tastes yummy. They are fine and they look wonderful. Simnel cake is something which I have loved my entire life.
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. The top layer is capped by a circle of "eggs" made of the same paste, and is lightly browned under a grill.
To begin with this recipe, we have to prepare a few components. You can have simnel cake using 30 ingredients and 10 steps. Here is how you cook it.
The ingredients needed to make Simnel cake:
- Get For the marzipan:
- Make ready 100 g ground almonds
- Get 100 g icing sugar, plus extra to dust
- Make ready 2 free-range egg yolks
- Make ready 2 tbsp. lemon juice
- Get For the cake:
- Get 5 tbsp. milk
- Get 1 good pinch of saffron
- Get 150 g raisins
- Get 150 g sultanas
- Take 40 g brandy, vin santo or white rum
- Get 50 g bleached almonds
- Make ready 175 g plain flour
- Take 1 tsp baking powder
- Prepare 45 g ground almonds
- Prepare 1/2 tsp fine salt
- Prepare 2 tsp mixed spice
- Make ready 180 g butter, at room temperature
- Make ready 180 g soft, light brown sugar
- Make ready 3 eggs
- Get 1 tbsp. golden syrup
- Get zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
- Take 50 g glacé cherries, halved
- Make ready 50 g mixed peel
- Get apricot jam, to brush over the cake
- Take For the icing:
- Make ready 30 g caster sugar
- Get 25 g butter
- Take 20 g lemon juice
- Make ready 110 g icing sugar
Sally toasts the marzipan with a blowtorch just before serving to give the cake a golden finish. If you don't have access to a blowtorch, you could place the cake under a grill for a similar effect. Add the rest of the cake ingredients to the soaked fruit and stir until well combined. Spoon half of this mixture into the bottom of the cake tin and level it off so it's as flat as possible.
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.
Bake this classic Easter simnel cake. Simnel Cake -A Recipe that has Stood the Test Of Time That was pre blogging and even pre internet, in fact I wrote the feature on a portable type writer but a classic recipe is a classic recipe and so I thought I would share that recipe in time for Mother's day this year. Families would gather and servants were awarded a rare day off to take flowers and gifts of Simnel cake to their. Simnel cake was traditionally given by servant girls to their mothers when they returned home on Mothering Sunday and it's now become a classic Easter cake. Simnel cake is a light fruit cake with two layers of almond paste or marzipan, one in the middle and one on top, that is toasted, and traditionally eaten at Easter but will last a long time in the unlikely event it's not eaten quickly.
So that is going to wrap this up for this exceptional food simnel cake recipe. Thanks so much for your time. I am sure you will make this at home. There’s gonna be interesting food at home recipes coming up. Remember to save this page in your browser, and share it to your loved ones, friends and colleague. Thanks again for reading. Go on get cooking!
