Easy Easter Cake Recipe (Simnel Cake)

Hi Bold Bakers, because Easter is coming up, I'm gonna show you how to make a traditional Simlall cake. It is really easy and so lovely. In a nice big pot here, we're gonna prepare our fruit. So here I have some mixed apricots, some raisins, some sultanas, whatever dried fruit you like. Add that into your pot. It's really important to use good quality fruit when making a fruit cake that makes all the difference. Into this, we are going to add some halved glass A cherries. If you can't get those in your country, I've got a recipe on my website of how you can make them yourself. Here I have a splash of brandy. That doesn't only add flavor, but it also helps to preserve the cake for a long time. And then we're gonna add in some citrus, like any good old fruit cake coming from Europe. So some orange zest. And when you've gotten that zest, go ahead and juice it. And then also a lemon zest. All that lovely zest. And then the juice. I have a lemon tree in my garden here in LA, so I'm very fortunate to get lovely lemons, especially this time of year in the spring. Okay, lovely. Our fruit, our booze, our citrus, everything is in here. Follow me over to the stovetop. So we're gonna turn on the heat to like a medium low. And we're just gonna let this mixture come to a simmer. Just give it a good mix and get all those raisins and fruit soaking. So while our fruit is hydrating, I'm gonna head back over and do my Marzipan. So we have this layer ready to go. So with Marzipan, it's really simple. It's an almond paste. I have a recipe on my website, or you can buy it, but it's honestly cheaper to make. Dust your counter with some granulated sugar. Here I have my Marzipan. We need two rounds that are eight inches, and then we also need some dough left over to create little balls on top, which are the signature look of a Simul cake. So I'm gonna roll this out nice and thin, just like you would roll out anything else. So Simul cakes, meaning, it's kind of a funny one. There's a lot of theories out there where the name came from, but the most common one is that it comes from the Latin similia, which means fine wheat flour. So I'm just gonna go with that one. So roll it out nice and thin. And what I'm going for here, I have my tin that we're baking it in. We want to get a nice round, two rounds actually, to line it in the middle of our cake, and then put Marzipan on top of our cake. If you see any cracks, just mush them back together. I need a little bit of help moving this onto my tray. There we go. One round. Then roll out the other one the exact same. And then with the last of the Marzipan, make 11 even sized balls to go on top. So now I've learned that the 11 balls actually represent the apostles minus Judas. So in case you're wondering why, that's why. Okay lovely, we have everything we need for our Marzipan part, so that's great. Let's move on to make the cake. So for the fruit cake, I am a sucker for a fruit cake, so this is right up my alley, especially with almonds in it. So the first thing we want to do is mix together our dry ingredients. Here I have some all-purpose flour, I have some ground almonds. You're going to need quite a few ground almonds for this recipe. Okay so next thing is mixed spice. We love using mixed spice in Europe. This is a combo of some of the usual suspects like mace, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon. It's quite similar to pumpkin pie spice, slightly. You can use that in a pinch, or you can use just cinnamon, that's fine too. I do have a recipe on my website of how you can make this yourself, and if you do a lot of European Irish baking like I do, it is worthwhile to make your own. Next a little bit of baking powder, and of course my favorite, salt. Get these a little mixy mix together. The ground almond in here adds extra flavor for sure. It adds extra fat, because it's nice and fatty. It also adds extra moisture, which makes this a moister fruit cake and not a dry one, which some people, you know, unfortunately are used to, that's not how I grew up. You know I think fruit cake is delicious, but some people have a different view on it. But hopefully I can change your mind. Okay lovely, those are all mixy mixed. Grand, here I have my mixer. I have a whole lot of room temperature butter, make sure that it's lovely and soft, because we're going to be creaming it up. You can use a stand mixer, or you can use a hand electric mixer, that's totally fine. You're going to add in some lovely dark brown sugar, which is one of my favorite things to bake with. And we are going to cream these ingredients together until they're really lovely and fluffy and light, so a few minutes. Definitely go on a high speed to really get your machine working. I'm going to give that a little bit of a mix down, and then we can start to add in our eggs shortly. So if you're more into carrot cake around Easter, I have the most amazing, best ever carrot cake. It is one of the biggest recipes on my website, and so lovely. I also have small batch cupcakes that are carrot cake, and I have an amazing bundt cake with this cream cheese filling, and it's just all so lovely and delicious. So whatever your taste is for Easter, I definitely have a recipe for you. Okay so when the butter and sugar is light and fluffy like this, we are going to add in our eggs while the machine is going, one at a time, until they're combined. Okay lovely, our eggs are combined. Now I'm going to take it off the machine, and we're going to mix in the rest of our ingredients. So in goes our flour mixture, and then just kind of fold that in until it's combined. I like to do this by hand because on the machine it can tend to over mix and toughen your flour, your cake. We don't want that. There we go. Look at that nice soft cake. Beautiful. Once your flour mixture is in there, we are going to grab our cooled fruit, and as you can see here, while it sits, it actually absorbs and rehydrates all of that liquid that you had in there so now it's even more flavorful. Look at that. So go ahead, oh my gosh it smells lovely. Then go ahead and add that in. Look at that, beautiful. And just keep on going, fold this in also. That's it. Look at that lovely spiced cake batter dotted with all that fruit. Beautiful. Okay, let me grab my Marzia pan and then let's assemble our cake. So for the pan I'm going to use an 8 inch springform pan, springform because it's a thick cake and you want to be able to get it out of there easily. So go ahead, add half of your batter into your pan. Judge that the best way you can. Spread it out. Make sure your pan is lined and also buttered. Lovely colored cake. All those cherries popping out. Okay, now, Marzia pan. Put your layer in there. Fit it in nice and snug. Any little cracks that might have been there, you won't even see those when it bakes. Lovely jubbly. Rest all your cake batter now and then smooth it out as evenly as you can on top. Okay, lovely, our oven is preheated. Let's get this guy in here because he needs quite a while to cook. Bake your Simul cake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit, 160 degrees Celsius for roughly an hour or so. It's a big old cake and it does need quite some time to cook. Here we go. Look at that beautiful cake. It smells amazing. It really reminds me of home. It's lovely and brown on top. It's a very even cake. It's heavy. It's fruit cake. It's not leavened very high. So I'm going to let this cool down in the tin. Let it go completely cold and then we can decorate it and finish it off. So I let my cake cool down completely so it's looking good now. I put it onto a tray. So here's what we're going to do. This is very traditional. You would take some strained apricot jam. Don't ask me why but for some reason it's always apricot jam. Probably because it kind of has a mild flavor I'm guessing. And you can't really see it. Like don't use strawberry or raspberry. Yeah that's why actually because it's a mild flavor. Anyways, spread this on top of your cake and this is going to be the adhesive that sticks your marzipan to your cake. So that's our cake. I'm going to slide on my marzipan that I already rolled out. Lovely and just kind of form it to your cake. If there's any little tears, give them a smush back together. So here I have the balls that we made. Eleven apostles. So on top of this marzipan before we add on the balls, just brush it with egg wash. This will get it lovely and shiny and golden and it will help the apostles stick to the cake. There we go. Nice and generous. So with your balls, do a little indent with your finger and just place in those balls. So try and space those out as evenly as you can. It's kind of hard because it's eleven. It's an uneven number. But I think I did a pretty good job. Then lastly, with your egg wash again, glaze these guys. So they stick to the cake and they also end up being shiny. So now the last finishing touch to this cake is to give it that iconic look and we are going to glaze, kind of broil the top of this marzipan. So I'm going to put my broiler on low, place it in there and very gently let it start to go brown. I want to keep a close eye on it so it doesn't burn. And we just want to toast the top of it. This cake is steeped in tradition. It is so beautiful and iconic and I love to have it this time of year. When you sit down to enjoy this cake, also have it with a big pot of tea. There is nothing better. This cake is for everyone, whether you celebrate Easter or not. There's something so lovely, so simple and so delicious about it. Being an expat and living far away from home, it brings me so much joy to be able to recreate these kinds of things and to be right back there as a child enjoying these. And those lovely memories that you have around Easter, Springtime in Ireland and all those things. I hope that you get a chance to make this recipe. Thank you so much for watching. I'll be back here again next week, so stick around. You can check out more videos and I'll see you again really soon.