Skip to main content

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

Popular posts from this blog

Greece is the word! Part 1: Athens

The last few times we have been on holiday, my family has asked, "Mum, are you going to blog about this one?" It's felt like an overwhelming task. For a start, we now have FOUR phones with photos on, rather than one digital camera. Also, I regularly write quite long blog posts about three-hour walks. How on earth will I summarise a full week's holiday? But this time, I thought I should try. It's one of the most enjoyable holidays we've had in a while, and I've definitely done too many Peak District posts recently. Everyone needs a change of scenery. So here we go, jetting off to Athens. Day 1 We landed at Athens airport in a looming thunderstorm, but the worst of the rain held off until we'd made it safely to our apartment. Graham had earmarked a nice little restaurant called Lolos for dinner - eating shell-on prawns in tomato sauce was a deliciously messy experience - and we went to bed early after our 3am start. Day 2 Next day we climbed Philopappos ...

Greece is the word! Part 2: Epidaurus

For the first part of our Greek holiday, see here . Day 4 - continued After much waiting around, we acquired a hire car and set off for the second part of our holiday. I am so glad that Graham can get into a strange car in a foreign country and drive away with no problems. I would be a nervous wreck. Even Graham was a little spooked by the Athens traffic - very narrow lanes crowded with cars and buses, and mopeds zipping in and out of every available gap. I had left Google Maps set to "avoid tolls", which meant that we stayed off the fancy new highway and took the old road towards Corinth instead. There was practically no traffic, so although it was slower, it felt very relaxed. We passed hills, hotels and oil refineries. Along the way, we stopped at a supermarket for supplies and drank Green Cola at the beach over the road. Crossing the Corinth Canal at Isthmia, we started heading south through the mountains of the Peloponnese. The sky had been growing darker and darker, and...

Derwent Valley: Derby City and the Derwent Pilgrimage

It was 8 am and I was already hayfeverish, headachey and hot. Why on earth was I setting out to walk through the middle of Derby, when I could be up in the hills of the Peak District? No one was forcing me to do this section. I could skip it entirely. But I knew I wouldn't, because this was the next part of the Derwent Valley Heritage Way. And besides, I had a suspicion that it would be better than it looked. Alvaston Park was certainly a good start. It's a wide sweep of green grass and mature trees. I used to come here quite often when the boys were small. I was glad to see some of the planets were still there - although Mars has had a lot of feet standing on it, I think. Here's a tiny Toby in 2013 with Mars... ... and a more battered Mars today. Alvaston Park I kept off the roads for a while by following a cycle route. Even when I joined the traffic, it wasn't bad. The factories and office blocks had roses outside. This road, now the A5194, used to be the A6 coming in...