Hey everyone, it is John, welcome to my recipe site. Today, I’m gonna show you how to make a special dish, simnel cake. One of my favorites. For mine, I am going to make it a little bit unique. This will be really delicious.
Simnel cake is one of the most popular of current trending meals on earth. It is simple, it is quick, it tastes delicious. It is appreciated by millions daily. They’re nice and they look fantastic. Simnel cake is something that I have loved my whole life.
Just made this Simnel Cake and it came together beautifully. I added some almond essence to the batter as well as a little cinnamon allspice ginger and nutmeg. 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.
To get started with this particular recipe, we have to first prepare a few components. You can have simnel cake using 30 ingredients and 10 steps. Here is how you can achieve that.
The ingredients needed to make Simnel cake:
- Prepare For the marzipan:
- Prepare ground almonds
- Get icing sugar, plus extra to dust
- Take free-range egg yolks
- Take lemon juice
- Get For the cake:
- Prepare milk
- Make ready good pinch of saffron
- Get raisins
- Get sultanas
- Prepare brandy, vin santo or white rum
- Prepare bleached almonds
- Make ready plain flour
- Get baking powder
- Get ground almonds
- Get fine salt
- Make ready mixed spice
- Make ready butter, at room temperature
- Get soft, light brown sugar
- Make ready eggs
- Make ready golden syrup
- Make ready zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
- Prepare glacé cherries, halved
- Get mixed peel
- Take apricot jam, to brush over the cake
- Prepare For the icing:
- Prepare caster sugar
- Make ready butter
- Get lemon juice
- Prepare 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. Simnel cake is a delicious fruit cake traditionally eaten at Easter time in Britain. 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.
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. I used to make one for my Mum every year, when I lived in England! Traditionally made to mark Mothering Sunday, this cake is also known as an Easter Cake; Simnel cake has a fascinating cultural heritage with roots that stretch back to the Romans and Athenians. In Britain, known as the Shrewsbury Simnel, it is simply made. Families would gather and servants were awarded a rare day off to take flowers and gifts of Simnel cake to their.
So that’s going to wrap it up with this special food simnel cake recipe. Thanks so much for reading. I’m sure you will make this at home. There is gonna be interesting food in home recipes coming up. Don’t forget 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!
