Easter baking, Easter writing

It's almost Easter! To celebrate, I've been doing some seasonal baking. And I'm writing a special blog series for Holy Week. It's called Conversations on the way to the Cross, exploring the events leading up to Jesus' death and resurrection through the mouths of some of the people most closely involved. So watch out for a post every day from Palm Sunday, March 29, to Easter Sunday, April 5!

In the meantime, you may want something to eat. Try these recipes.

Easter Biscuits

Some years ago, when I was living in Bristol, I wandered into a local chemist for something. On the counter they had small bottles of cassia oil, with this recipe attached. Intrigued, I bought some. The cassia oil is long gone, but the recipe remains. It works just as well substituted with cinnamon (a relative of cassia). If you happen to come across any cassia oil, the original recipe called for 6 drops.

75g butter
75g sugar
1 egg
185g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
50g currants
caster sugar, for sprinkling

Cream butter and sugar, then beat in the egg. Sift together the flour, baking powder and cinnamon, and stir into the creamed mixture. Mix in the currants.

Place the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes. Roll out (the currants determine the thickness), and cut with a 7.5 cm round cutter. Bake at 170°C for 12-15 minutes until just golden round the edges.

Sprinkle with sugar and place on racks to cool. Makes 15 - 18.

Simnel Cake

The traditional recipe has a layer of marzipan baked in the middle of the cake. This year, I decided to adapt Nigella Lawson's Marzipan Fruit Cake, which has chunks of marzipan mixed into it. Here's my version:

150g raisins
100g glacé cherries, halved
150g ready-to-eat dried apricots, quartered
100ml apple juice
250g marzipan (plus 250g more for the topping)
50g ground almonds
zest of 1 lemon
175g plain flour
75g sugar
100g butter
2 large eggs

20 or 24 cm round cake tin, greased and lined

The night before you want to make the cake, mix the raisins, cherries and apricots with the apple juice and leave to soak. Dice the marzipan and put in a bag in the freezer.

Making the cake is dead easy: just beat together the almonds, lemon zest, flour, sugar, butter and eggs. Drain the fruit and add with the frozen marzipan. Spread evenly in the tin and bake at 140°C for about 2 hours. Leave to cool in the tin.

To make it into a Simnel cake, roll out about half of the remaining marzipan to a circle to cover the top of the cake. Brush the cake with marmalade or apricot jam, and stick it on. Use the rest of the marzipan to make 11 small balls, and stick these on top. Brush with egg white if you like (I never do) and put under the grill for a few minutes to brown the marzipan.

Comments

Supercars and Selfies on the South Coast

We drove south on a wet, wet Saturday in August. The windscreen wipers swished endlessly back and forth, as we debated whether it was worth stopping anywhere except for the overcrowded motorway services. By the time we reached Winchester, the wipers had subsided to an occasional flick across the screen. We decided to stop. Of course, as soon as we left the car park there was a brief shower, but we ducked into the City Mill, now a National Trust property. There was a large room full of the usual kind of displays about flour milling; a recently renovated garden; and downstairs, the mill race running at full tilt. The mill is built right across the River Itchen. Winchester City Mill garden The mill race Water wheel (awaiting renovation) We stayed dry as we explored further into Winchester. There was even some blue sky for our selfie by the cathedral! But as we walked back to the car the rain hit us like a hose on full blast. An overhanging building provided some slight shelter, but the wa

National Forest Way: Calke Abbey to Ashby de la Zouch

All the best walking blogs have maps on. I finally figured out how to add a route map to mine. If I get time, I'll add them to the previous posts as well, so you can see where I went. So, here are the two walks which made up the next stretch of the NFW. Walk 1 I started from the National Trust property and walked along by the lake, up the hill by the deer park, and down to Staunton Harold reservoir - all very familiar. Calke village postbox featured a highland cow on top. Lake at Calke Abbey Herd of deer A short stretch on the road took me to Dimminsdale, which was new to me. There are records of mining at the site from the 13th century until the end of the 19th century. It's incredible to think that people worked there for so many hundreds of years. Now it is a secluded landscape of still pools and shaggy trees. Dimminsdale I crossed a small section of the Staunton Harold estate, then went up a private lane with some rather nice houses. My turning point was where the Nati

Reading for Spiritual Formation 2023-24

I wasn't sure whether to read another set of theology books this year. Could the time I spend on it be better spent on something else? At what point does it become reading for the sake of it, without having much impact on my wider life? It's difficult to tell. However, as usual, I had a growing list of books I wanted to read. I do need to think about what I'm doing as well as what I'm reading, and I don't expect to continue this specific discipline indefinitely. But I decided there was space for at least one more year of Reading for Spiritual Formation. So, without further soul-searching: The Books. Three Mile an Hour God Kosuke Koyama Japanese theologians are few and far between; Christianity is still very much a niche religion in Japan. Kosuke Koyama was Japanese and appears to be both influential and accessible. Not every theologian is both! So I'm excited to read his recently republished book Three Mile an Hour God. It was originally written in 1979, and is

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog