With Easter just around the corner I wanted to
make the traditional English Easter dessert, simnel cake.
Now rarely have I come across a dish with a more varied, murky and frankly fictitious past than
this classic English cake, but that's going to make it all the more fun to talk about.
So thank you to Trade Coffee for sponsoring this video
as we dive into the mythical history of simnel cake.
So what is simnel cake?
I ono.
Well it kind of depends on where you are and when you are but we'll get to that part later.
See the English towns of Devizes, Bury and Shrewsbury all have competing forms of this classic dessert but
one thing that they typically have in common is that they were made on Mothering Sunday
or the fourth Sunday in Lent and then eaten either then or on Easter which is when it's typically eaten today.
So in deciding on which version of the cake to make today I had my options open
but I finally decided on a recipe by May Byron.
Now based on how it's written the recipe is probably
from the early or mid 19th century but it was in a book that she compiled of recipes from the
17 and 1800s that was published in 1914, and while she says that the recipe is from Gloucestershire
it's definitely a Bury style simnel cake.
Take a quarter of a pound of flour, three ounces of mixed peel,
quarter of a pound of butter, three good-sized eggs, quarter of a pound of caster sugar,
two ounces of ground almonds, three quarters of a pound of currants.
Beat butter to a cream add sugar and beaten eggs gradually,
and work well together.
Add flour sifted; beat thoroughly then add remaining ingredients.
Line a tin with greased paper, pour in the mixture and bake in gentle oven from two to three hours.
When cold, make some almond paste. Put a layer on top of the cake.
Form remainder into round balls. Brush the cake over with white of egg and dust with castor sugar.
Set in a cool oven till balls are lightly browned and decorate with crystallized fruits.
So for this recipe what you'll need is:
1 scant cup or 113 grams of flour.
Now this would have been self-rising flour which has a bit of salt in it as well as baking powder.
You'll notice that she didn't have any raising agents in the cake recipe so that's how we know that that's what she was using.
It was very popular at the time and still is popular in England
but if you're in the US or much of the world you might have trouble finding it so what you'll need is:
one and a half teaspoons of baking powder and a half teaspoon of salt,
then one half cup or 85 grams of mixed peel,
eight tablespoons or 113 grams of butter,
3 beaten eggs plus 1 egg white,
a heaping half cup or 113 grams of caster sugar plus extra for dusting,
a half cup or 57 grams of almond flour
and 2 cups or 340 grams of currants.
The almond paste recipe that I'm using is from about the same time,
and it just calls for 250 grams of caster sugar 250 grams of almond flour and two eggs.
So it is a wonderfully cold and rainy day outside today here in Los Angeles which is a rarity to say the least,
but it is the perfect kind of day to bake a cake with a nice cup of coffee.
"All right a quick cup of coffee."
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Now before I go make a second cup of coffee
I should make my cake.
So first set your oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit or 170 Celsius.
Then whisk the baking powder and salt into the flour and set aside.
Then in a large bowl beat the butter until smooth and fluffy,
and slowly add in the sugar, and beat.
Then add in the eggs, and beat some more.
It's a lot of beating. It's a very violent cake.
Then sift in the flour and gently fold it in,
and do the same with the almond flour.
Finally stir in the currants and the mixed peel.
The fruit to cake batter ratio is crazy in this case. It's a lot of fruit.
Then line a round pan with parchment.
I used an 8 inch cake tin.
Then add the batter in and smooth the top.
Now in most modern seminal cake recipes there's actually a layer of the almond paste inside of the cake.
So you would put down half of the batter then a layer like a disk of almond paste,
and then the rest of the batter and bake it like that. Then there would be more almond paste on top.
I'm not doing that because that's not what this recipe calls for but if you want just make a little extra almond paste
and do what I just said.
Then set the cake in the oven and bake for about two hours or until a skewer comes out clean.
Now while the cake bakes let's take a look at how the simnel cake MAY have got its name.
So as I said earlier most of the history surrounding simnel cake is
dubious and should probably be relegated to the realm of folklore, and that's because
the victorians just loved making things up.
"TREASON!" >:/
"Treason."
But even so we are going to go through the history because fact or fiction
it's really interesting.
Now the first origin story is actually not that interesting,
and it's probably the one that's actually true.
The name came from the Latin term 'simila conspersa' which simply means fine white flour,
and it probably referred to a bread rather than any kind of cake.
In the Chronicle of Battle Abby William the Conqueror
"...left to his monks a memorial of his love, in appointing for their daily use bread fit for the table of a king,
which is commonly called Simenel. Thirty-six ounces by weight and one-fourth more during Lent,
that something might remain for charity."
So yeah white bread fit for a king but white bread.
"Nice.
Nice.
Not thrilling but nice."
And it's also probably this bread definition that made its way into the Coverdale Bible of 1535.
"Thou didest eate nothing but symnels, honny and oyle"
Not a very well balanced diet, at all.
The next story of how the cake may have got its name is definitely more interesting.
See if you brush up your Shakespeare then you'll remember the villainous King Richard III.
Now one of Richard's most wicked deeds is the supposed murder of his two nephews Edward and Richard.
Yes the nephew was also named Richard. You'll find that in this period of English history
everyone is named either Edward, or Richard, or Henry and the women are all Elizabeth and Mary.
Anyway after King Richard was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field
and Henry Tudor had himself crowned King Henry VII another claimant to the throne came out of the woodwork.
It was a boy of ten and he claimed to be one of those murdered boys
from the tower....
Then he changed his story to be a cousin instead also named Edward Earl of Warwick,
but regardless of who he said he was he was just being used as a pawn by some of the more wealthy nobles.
And a priest named Richard Simmons not to be confused with that Richard Simmons,
well the new King Henry VII said no I don't think so, and in fact this kid isn't even of royal blood.
His name is actually Lambert Simnel, and he's the son of a baker so there was a little rebellion,
a little battling and things did not go well for lil Lambert.
His priest friend got thrown in jail for the rest of his life and most of the other adults pulling the strings got their heads chopped off.
But wee Simnel on account that he was only 10 years old was sent to work in the kitchens at the castle
and supposedly while he was there he invented a cake and they named it after him, simnel cake.
Right seems very believable.
Yeah this is definitely one of the stories that the
Victorians just made up.
Now the last story of where it got its name is also a Victorian tale
but I feel like they never tried to pass this one off as actual history.
It's more like one of those 'Just So Stories' like how the elephant got its trunk and it was a crocodile that pulled on it.
This is how the simnel cake got its name and it is about as believable but also just as entertaining.
It comes from the 1867 edition of the Chamber's 'Book of Days'. See there was a
husband and wife duo, Simon who they call Sim and Nelly who they call Nell.
And at the end of Lent they come across a bit of unleavened dough that needed using up,
so Nell suggests that they make a cake and Simon agreed but
"...when the cake was made, a subject of violent discord arose,
Sim insisting that it should be boiled, while Nell no less obstinately contended that it should be baked.
This dispute ran from words to blows, for Nell not choosing to let her province in the household be thus interfered with,
jumped up and threw the stool she was sitting on at Sim,
who on his part seized a besom, and applied it with right good will to the head and shoulders of his spouse,
now she seized the broom and the battle became so warm, that it might have had a very serious result,
had not Nell proposed a compromise that the cake should be boiled first, and afterwards baked."
Well that escalated quickly.
Now they did finish the cake and,
"This new and remarkable production in the art of confectionary became known by the name of the cake of...
Sim-Nel, or simnel."
So ignoring their marital issues and the gratuitous domestic violence of the story the cake that is described
is the Shrewsbury simnel cake.
It would be first boiled like a Christmas pudding and then wrapped
in pastry and baked so it would be crisp and hard on the outside.
Then it was traditionally decorated with little crenellations like a castle on top.
And while we don't have a real recipe for that,
at least that i could find we do have a wonderful little poem from 1867 that describes how the cake was made.
"She who would a simnel make, flour and saffron first must shake,
candy, spices, eggs must take,
chop and pound till arms do ache; then must boil, and then must bake,
for a crust too hard to break.
When at Mid-lent thou dost wake, to thy mother bear thy cake;
she will prize it for thy sake."
And as Ms. Elliott says in the poem the cake was made for the ladies mother,
and at least by the 17th century the cake had become associated with Mothering Sunday
which has nothing to do with going to visit your mother.
It actually meant that you would go to visit your mother church or where you were baptized.
Now it probably wasn't that far to go visit your mothering church in the days when
very few people ever left their hometown at least to live somewhere else, but by the 19th century
people had been traveling and were getting jobs out and about so going to visit your mother church
was also a good excuse to go visit your mother.
You never call, you never write,
and then one day a year you come visit your mother?
You want a medal? Oh, you saint!
Oh you break your mother's heart.
By the time that poem and the story of Simon and Nelly were written the Shrewsbury simnel cake
was actually on its way out.
It was to be replaced by the Bury simnel cake, the kind that we're making today,
and that's because the Bury simnel cake was about to go on one heck of a marketing blitz.
First in 1845 at the national anti-corn law bazaar, sounds like a real hoot.
Also, if you didn't watch last week's video on the Irish potato famine I talk about the Corn Laws,
and why people were so anti-corn law.
Anyway the bazaar featured a cake of ponderous proportions.
"It is a Bury simnel, and measures, we should think, some five feet in diameter weighing 280 lbs,
and upon its broad surface a sheet of iced sugar so large as to have inscribed upon it
nearly all the maxims which embody the religion of the league,
and so sweet and richly ornamented
as to almost induce the visitor to swallow them."
That was a bit of really well-written shade right there.
And in 1863 a much smaller albeit still 70 pound Bury simnel cake was given to Queen Victoria,
and since then that was the simnel cake to have. Now our cake is not 280 pounds
nor is it even 70 pounds probably about 2 pounds I would think. Maybe 3 pounds but
it should be about ready to take out of the oven.
So once your cake is baked set it on a wire rack to cool completely.
Then we'll make the almond paste and it is really easy.
Just add the almond flour and your sugar to a bowl and mix together.
Then add in your eggs and mix until smooth.
Boom you done.
Now if you refrigerate it, it is going to be easier to work with but you don't have to.
Take half of the almond paste and roll it out to form a disc.
Then set that on top of the cooled cake and you can crimp the edges or score it for decoration,
it's really up to you. Then take the other half and form it into little balls to set on the cake.
Now today you would make 11 balls to represent the 12 apostles minus one because Judas doesn't get a ball.
But that actually wasn't really a thing until quite a bit later so you can make as many balls as you want.
Then you brush the top of the cake with the egg white and sprinkle a little bit of sugar on top.
I forgot and didn't remember until about five minutes ago.
Luckily it doesn't change the flavor that much but it will make it so my cake is probably not going to be
as wonderfully dark brown as your cake will be because surely you will not make that same mistake.
But once you've dusted it with sugar set it back in the oven for a few minutes though honestly the
best way to do it is to put it under the broiler for about two minutes but watch it carefully or
else it will burn.
And then it's ready to serve. Here we are Bury simnel cake.
Like i said the amount of fruit in there is just it's fantastic and I did get a fair nice dark browning on the-
on the almond paste but it would have been better if I had put the egg wash on. I also decorated it
with a little bit of crystallized fruit but I don't really like crystallized fruit so I
didn't put that much on and i'm actually just going to knock it off right now.
But here we go.
It's good but it's very sweet and very....
fruity.
It's kind of dense. You know denser than than
a typical cake and that's because they're like five times the amount of fruit to to the batter,
but it's the flavor is very nice. My favorite part is the almond paste it's so simple but hm!
I just eat that all day. And this kind of cake goes perfectly with a cup of coffee from Trade coffee.
So make sure to get 50% off of your first bag by clicking the link in the description and
using the code tastingh50
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.