Simnel cake is a light fruit cake with two layers of almond paste or marzipan, one in the middle and one on top, that is toasted, and eaten during the Easter period in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and some other countries. The cake is made from these ingredients: white flour, sugar, butter, eggs, fragrant spices, dried fruits, zest and candied peel.
Simnel cakes have been known since at least medieval times. Recently, they became a Mothering Sunday tradition, when young girls in service would make one to be taken home to their mothers on their day off. Different towns had their own recipes and shapes of the Simnel cake. Bury, Devizes and Shrewsbury produced large numbers to their own recipes, but it is the Shrewsbury version that became most popular and well known.
It was originally made for the middle Sunday of Lent, when the forty day fast would be relaxed, Laetare Sunday, also known as Refreshment Sunday, Mothering Sunday, Sunday of the Five Loaves, and Simnel Sunday – after the cake. The meaning of the word "simnel" is unclear: there is a 1226 reference to "bread made into a simnel", which is understood to mean the finest white bread, from the Latin simila – "fine flour", though John de Garlande felt that the word was equivalent to placenta cake, a cake that was intended to please. A popular legend attributes the invention of the Simnel cake to Lambert Simnel; however, references to the cake were recorded some 200 years before his birth.
Conventionally eleven, or occasionally twelve, marzipan balls are used to decorate the cake, with a story that the balls represent the twelve apostles, minus Judas or Jesus and the twelve apostles, minus Judas. This tradition developed late in the Victorian era, altering the mid Victorian tradition of decorating the cakes with preserved fruits and flowers.
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