It’s been quite some time now since I’ve been inspired to write
something about food. Maybe because
since New Year 2014 I’ve been watching my weight – well I’ve always watched my
weight, but usually I watched it creep up! Just after the New Year I decided
that enough was enough so I stopped drinking alcohol and cut out all kinds of
useless calories and it’s working.
Someone asked me yesterday where my overweight twin had got to; he
hadn’t been around for a while. Now,
that did do my ego and resolve a power of good!
However yesterday I slipped, more anon.
I remember that my mum used to
make a special cake for Easter, called a “Simnel Cake,” so I looked it up on
the ‘tin brain’ to find out more about it.
Simnel cakes, it seems, have a long and interesting history and not a
little mythology attached. The main
thread is that they were made by servant girls in grand houses, as gifts for
their mothers at Easter and usually given on the girls’ first day off after the
hiring fair. I imagine that they were
given the leftovers from the “Big House” pantry when the family decided that
they would move back to the country in the spring after wintering in London; or
when they just got fed up of eating rich winter food. Whatever, the main ingredients are sugar,
spices, dried fruit, marzipan and a key ingredient, in medieval times, was
white flour - a great luxury.
Now to my sin – having made some
Simnel cakes, I made the version known as the Shrewsbury Simnel cake named
after the city where it was first said to have been made, intending them to be Easter
gifts for friends. However, when I was
invited to a birthday party at short notice and didn’t have a gift, hey ho, out
came a Simnel cake in all its glory. The
lady in question couldn’t resist cutting it and sharing it with her guests and
I couldn’t resist a slice – it was truly delicious and much appreciated. So lovely people, here is the recipe. I hope you enjoy making one or several, they
do make great gifts and friends really appreciate the time and love that goes
into a homemade gift, I can assure you.
Recipe
Ingredients
·
250g unsalted butter
·
175g plain white flour
·
4 eggs
·
200g soft brown sugar
·
100g ground almonds
·
2 heaped teaspoons allspice
·
1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
·
1 heaped teaspoon ground nutmeg
·
1 level teaspoon ground cloves
·
150g golden sultanas (or more or less to suit
your taste)
·
150g glace cherries (or more or less to suit
your taste)
·
1 level teaspoon and a pinch baking powder
·
1 dessert spoon vanilla essence
·
1 dessert spoon glycerine
·
500g homemade marzipan (for the recipe see below)
Method
Preparation
Set the oven to 150 C
Prepare a 21cm loose based, spring
sided baking tin by buttering it lightly, then prepare to line it with a double
fold of baking parchment. When you’ve
made your double fold, make another
about 2cm up from the initial fold and snip linked “V” shaped serrations into it
at the bottom (folded side) to enable it to fit easily to the sides of the
baking tin. Butter it on the inside side
and fit it into the tin, with the “V” shapes at the base. Cut a rough circle from the leftover butter
paper and put it design side down
into the base of the tin to secure the side lining. Next, using the loose base of the tin as a
template cut a double layer of baking parchment so that it fits snugly to the
inside base of the tin. Fit the base, butter
the cut out circle and place it butter side down on the base making sure to
cover the whole base including the “V” shaped cut outs. I hate this bit, I’m glad it’s over! In fact you can keep these “cartouches” as
they’re called for another time, I do. When
you remove them from the cooked cake do it carefully, they ‘kind of mature.’ At least that’s my excuse.
Make the cake batter.
First scald the sultanas in a jug
with enough boiling water to cover them, for about 30 minutes.
Beat the eggs with an electric
whisk in a bowl
Soften the butter and beat in the
soft brown sugar, until the mixture is well blended and light. Add the beaten eggs a little at a time until
the mixture is lovely and sloppy! Beat
in the spices, vanilla essence, glycerine, baking powder and finally the flour
in maybe four portions, beating the mix to a smooth consistency between each
addition. Finally add the ground almonds
and beat them in gently, by now the batter will be quite stiff, don’t overheat
your beater! Drain the sultanas and add
them to the mix followed by the cherries. Now making sure they’re super clean, get
your hands in, I love it! Stir the
batter by hand until you have the fruit evenly distributed through the batter. We’re almost there – but now scrape your
hands clean and wash them well, because its time to add the finishing touch,
the marzipan that you have made earlier.
Roll out enough marzipan to make
a circle at least 2cm thick, to fit maybe half a centimetre shy of the inside
of the cake tin. Set it to one side.
Load approximately a half of the
cake batter into the baking tin, making sure that it is level, next place the circle
of marzipan on top. Load the remaining
batter on top of the marzipan; make a small depression in the centre of the
batter so that when the cake rises during cooking, the baked cake has a level
top, rather than a dome.
Cook
Make a tinfoil ‘hat’ and fit it
to the top of the parchment cartouche, we don’t want a burned finish after all
this work. Put the cake tin on a lower middle shelf of the oven and bake the
cake for two to two and a half hours at 150 C, check with a skewer in the usual
way to check that the cake is properly cooked.
A tip – I like to put a big dish of water in the bottom of the oven when
cakes are cooking, I tend to think it keeps them moist.
When the cake is cooked, remove
it from the oven and allow it to cool in the tin for ten minutes or so before
springing the sides. Then, after putting
the tinfoil hat on the worktop, invert the cake tin over it and lifting the
sides of the tin first, take the cake carefully from the tin and recover the
parchment cartouches. The base of the
tin will probably still be sticking to the bottom of the cake, remove it
carefully. Allow the cake to cool in
this position overnight.
The reason for inverting the cake
is to ensure a flat top for later decoration.
Decoration
This being an Easter cake, there
is a strong Christian tradition attaching to how it is presented but you don’t have to be Christian to enjoy the
result! However, this is how it happened
in “olden times.”
Roll out a circle of marzipan about
1cm thick, sufficient to overlap the top of the cake a little. Warm a couple of dessert spoons full of
apricot jam and spread it over the top of the cake. Put the circle of marzipan on to the ‘jammy’
cake top, trim to a neat finish and pinch the edges as though you were sealing
the top of a pie. We’re almost
done. Now for the Christian bit! Omit this part according to your views – but of
course, you get less marzipan!
Make eleven balls from the
remaining marzipan and fix them evenly around the circumference of the cake
with a dab of jam. So what’s Christian
about that I hear you ask? They are said
to represent eleven of the twelve apostles, Judas having been dismissed for bad
behaviour! Isn’t folklore wonderful!
Lastly set the grill to ‘full,’
put the cake under and toast the marzipan topping and very, very carefully until
it is just lightly browned.
To go the full “Monte” you can
wrap yellow ribbon around the sides of the cake, tied off in a bow as you bring
it to the table – but that really is showing off.
Voila, Done!
If you’ve got this far, thanks for reading the latest blog from Carl’s
Crafty Kitchen!
