Hey everyone, it’s Brad, welcome to our recipe page. Today, I’m gonna show you how to prepare a special dish, simnel cake. One of my favorites. For mine, I will make it a little bit unique. This is gonna smell and look delicious.
Simnel cake is a traditional Easter fruitcake, packed with dried fruit and spices and topped with sweet marzipan. I've never attempted a Simnel Cake before as my late mother traditionally made our family cake, but I decided to make this as a reminder of happy Easters spent together. Traditionally simnel cake is a light and moist fruit cake with a layer of marzipan or almond paste running through the middle and on top.
Simnel cake is one of the most favored of recent trending foods on earth. It’s appreciated by millions every day. It’s easy, it’s quick, it tastes yummy. They are nice and they look fantastic. Simnel cake is something which I have loved my entire life.
To get started with this particular recipe, we must prepare a few ingredients. You can cook simnel cake using 30 ingredients and 10 steps. Here is how you can achieve it.
The ingredients needed to make Simnel cake:
- Take For the marzipan:
- Take 100 g ground almonds
- Make ready 100 g icing sugar, plus extra to dust
- Get 2 free-range egg yolks
- Take 2 tbsp. lemon juice
- Take For the cake:
- Get 5 tbsp. milk
- Prepare 1 good pinch of saffron
- Prepare 150 g raisins
- Prepare 150 g sultanas
- Get 40 g brandy, vin santo or white rum
- Take 50 g bleached almonds
- Get 175 g plain flour
- Get 1 tsp baking powder
- Get 45 g ground almonds
- Get 1/2 tsp fine salt
- Get 2 tsp mixed spice
- Get 180 g butter, at room temperature
- Take 180 g soft, light brown sugar
- Prepare 3 eggs
- Take 1 tbsp. golden syrup
- Take zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
- Get 50 g glacé cherries, halved
- Take 50 g mixed peel
- Take apricot jam, to brush over the cake
- Get For the icing:
- Make ready 30 g caster sugar
- Make ready 25 g butter
- Prepare 20 g lemon juice
- Prepare 110 g icing sugar
Often the top is decorated with Easter decorations. Simnel cake has long been a traditional treat at Easter Time but somehow it is being lost. Which is a great shame as it tastes absolutely delicious. Simnel cake is a very light fruit cake that is famous in the UK.
Steps 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.
It is covered in marzipan then toasted with almond paste is baked into the middle of the cake. Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted. This delicious fruit and marzipan concoction is an Easter classic. The definitive Easter dessert, Mary Berry's simnel cake is the perfect bake to share with your family over. Simnel Cake is an Easter classic that comes at just the right time after Christmas to fill the need for a good.
So that is going to wrap it up with this special food simnel cake recipe. Thank you very much for your time. I am confident that you can make this at home. There is gonna be interesting food at home recipes coming up. Remember to bookmark this page in your browser, and share it to your loved ones, colleague and friends. Thanks again for reading. Go on get cooking!
