Yesterday was Mothering Sunday. I was lucky enough to spend the day with my mum (and my dad and my husband and my children too). I had been intending to get my mum some British grown flowers either from Common Farm Flowers or Wiggly Wigglers, but I couldn’t decide who to order them from or where to get them sent to and when. The decision making was proving a bit too much for me. Then, in the middle of last week I received a marketing letter from Wiggly Wigglers (from whom I have bought flowers in the past and they were beautiful) saying that it was traditional to make your mum a Simnel Cake for Mothering Sunday. So I did:
A Simnel Cake is a fruit cake with one layer of marzipan cooked into the middle and a second layer of marzipan on the top. The 11 marzipan balls represent the apostles, minus Judas. I followed the Mary Berry recipe in Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake book, which you can also find online here. I replaced the glace cherries and candied peel with an equal weight of dried apricots, because my mum likes apricots and I thought they would taste nice with the almonds in the marzipan.
I had always assumed that Simnel Cake was an Easter thing. Even if they were given on Mothering Sunday they might have then been kept until Easter, in the same way as Christmas cakes are made some time before Christmas. Fortunately, my mum assured me that eating Simnel Cake on Mothering Sunday was also traditional. Mothering Sunday is also called Refreshment Sunday, which apparently is a day during Lent when you are allowed to relax your fast. This means you are allowed to eat cake. Good news. Having tried some of my mum’s Simnel Cake I am now planning to make another one for Easter. The next one will not get away.
Making, Baking and Raking 
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That looks really tasty – unfortunately I am the only person in our household who likes marzipan and, much as I’d love to have a go at making a Simnel Cake, I fear I’d end up having to eat the whole thing by myself which wouldn’t do my waistline any good at all 🙂
Thanks! I tend to justify my excessive cake consumption along these lines: by eating more cake myself I leave less for the children. Therefore, they will eat less cake and I will feel like a better mother. It’s all for their benefit you see, nothing at all to do with greed/cake addiction!
Lol, Loving that reasoning 🙂