Simnel Cake. Easter and Mothering Sunday.

Perhaps preemptively I've got a Spring feeling and so here is Mary Berry's Simnel cake recipe, it is simple simple simple and so very delicious.  

It is an all-in-one cake where you just throw all the ingredients in a bowl and beat well.  And perfect for using up mixed dried fruit.  Apparently it was traditionally given by servant girls to their mothers when returning home for Mothering Sunday but whatever the excuse you come up with, it makes a delicious mid Lent treat.  

If I had some primroses or other Spring flowers I'd pop them on the top - but out here it is far too hot for such things and I understand that snow is falling in the UK today!


Ingredients

For the Cake

100 g glace cherries
225 g unsalted butter, softened
225 g brown sugar
4 large free-range eggs
225 g self-raising flour
375 g fruit cake mix
2 lemons, zest only
2 tsp mixed spice

For the Middle and Topping

450 g marzipan


Method

1. Grease and line a round 20 cm cake tin and preheat the oven to 150C.
2. Cut the cherries into quarters, put in a sieve and rinse under running water.  Drain well then dry thoroughly on kitchen paper.

3. Place all the cake ingredients in a large bowl and beat well until well combined.  Spoon half into the cake tin and level the top.  Roll one third of the marzipan into a circle the size of the tin and place over the top.  Spoon over the remaining mixture and level the top.

4. Bake in the oven for about 2 1/2 hours or until well risen, evenly brown and firm to the touch.  Cover with aluminium foil after one hour if the top is browning too quickly.  Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out, peel off the parchment and finish cooling on a wire rack.

6. When the cake is cool, make 11 little marzipan balls (to represent Christ's apostles minus Judas) and then roll the remaining to fit the top of the cake (I used the cake tin as a guide).  Cover the top with the marzipan and then place the balls around the edge.

Delicious.