PREPARING THE EASTER SEMNIL CAKE WITH LIMITED INGREDIENTS

The Simnel Cake is a traditional English spiced Easter cake with a layer of marzipan baked in the centre.... sometimes covered with marzipan and decorated .....
I could and will in a later post give you the recipe for the traditional Simnel Cake ...which is a light fruit cake ,  with a  surface  cover of marzipan ... and decorated with 11 marzipan eggs ...
I love this cake because of its history and you know my love of food history ....
Look up the history of the Simnel Cake , Wikipedia has a great site .... so do encyclopaedia’s offer a great source of knowledge .
Yes I still own a full set of leather bound Encyclopaedia Brittanica with Index books , the 1993 Annual  and the PROPAEDIA ( outline of knowledge ).
History doesn’t out date !!!
So here is the easy to prepare Easter Simnel Cake ....( surviving the pandemic with empty shelves in our supermarkets .)
This isn’t cooking ... but under the current conditions , it is the best we can do with limited ingredients .
Purchase a premade fruit cake  and a premade icing roll.
If you have enough fruit  ingredients and flour make your own fruit cake , a simple boiled fruit cake would be suffice and bake your cake in a round pan ( keeping with tradition ) .
To prepare the Simnel Cake ......slice the fruit cake in half . ( width wise )
Unroll the icing roll and trace out 2 shapes to cover the surface and middle of your layer .
With the excess icing  roll 11 balls .
Cover the top of the bottom of the cake with a layer of apricot jam
Place one piece of the cut icing in between the sliced cake
Then spread the jam over the top of the icing .
Then top the joined cake with the other pre shaped icing .
Decorate with the 11 balls of icing on top ....securing them with a dob of jam .
Finish off with a sprinkle of cinnamon ...
Now that I’ve given you the recipe  .... please look up the relevance of the 11 balls .