Once an Easter essential, simnel cake is harder to come by these days, overshadowed by copious amounts of chocolate. This is such a shame, because it’s a delicious, light and visually spectacular fruit cake with a burst of nuttiness provided by the melted marzipan layer in the middle. It is often decorated with 11 marzipan balls representing Jesus’s disciples – minus the treacherous Judas.
According to a legend with its roots in the Victorian era, simnel cake was created when a couple named Simon and Nelly argued about what treat they should make with some leftover unleavened dough. Simon wanted to boil it, whereas Nelly insisted it should be baked. In the end, they reached a compromise: the dough would be boiled then baked in a kind of pastry. Simon and Nelly’s names were later merged to form the name of their creation: simnel cake.
There is, of course, little truth in that tale. What we do know is that, before it was eaten on Easter Sunday, simnel cake was enjoyed on Mothering Sunday, during the 40-day Christian fasting period of Lent. Though we now celebrate mums on this date, in its original iteration this was a day when each Christian would return to their mother church or native diocese. It also offered an opportunity to relax Lenten fasting rules: eggy and dairy-based treats were briefly permitted back on the menu before churchgoers completed their period of penitential self-denial.