Simnel cake

Did You Know?

• Conventionally, 11 marzipan balls symbolise the 12 apostles minus Judas Iscariot; occasionally 12 are used, representing Jesus and the 11 apostles.
• An early reference to decorating with marzipan balls appears in May Byron's Pot-Luck Cookery, with no mention of this symbolism.
• Earlier styles of simnel cake were sometimes crenellated.

Ingredients

Simnel cake is a light fruitcake made from white flour, sugar, butter, eggs, fragrant spices, dried fruits, zest, and candied peel. Some versions include orange flower water or brandy in the batter or to flavour the almond paste. Marzipan or almond paste is used as a filling, with a layer placed in the middle before baking and another on top as decoration. Most recipes advise lining the tin with several layers of baking parchment and sometimes wrapping brown paper around the outside to prevent the marzipan from burning.

History

Simnel cake has been around since at least medieval times, with old bread laws hinting it was first boiled and then baked. That unusual two-step method sparked a folk tale, told from at least 1745 into the 1930s, about a couple named Simon and Nelly who fought over how to make it—one wanted to boil, the other to bake. After hitting each other with kitchen tools, they settled on a recipe that did both. In the UK, the cake is closely tied to Mothering Sunday, sometimes called Simnel Sunday.

Historian Ronald Hutton notes that in 17th-century Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, live-in servants and apprentices got that day off to visit their home church and their mothers, often bringing food or money when supplies were low. The calorie-rich simnel cake was a practical gift. Over time, it became simply an Easter treat. The name "simnel" is a bit of a puzzle.

A 1226 reference calls it "bread made into a simnel," meaning the finest white bread, from the Latin simila for fine flour (also the root of "semolina"). Scholar John de Garlande thought it matched the idea of a placenta cake, one meant to please. Different towns had their own versions and shapes. Bury and Shrewsbury each turned out many cakes to their own recipes.

Chambers Book of Days from 1869 shows a picture of the Shrewsbury simnel cake, yet in Shrewsbury, as in much of England, the cake is usually made using the Bury recipe.