Simnel Cake
Simnel cake is a fruit cake, similar to a Christmas cake, covered in marzipan eaten at Easter in England. On the top of the cake around the edge are eleven marzipan balls to represent the true apostles of Jesus; Judas is omitted.
The cake is made from rich ingredients: white flour, fragrant spices, dried fruits and peel.
Simnel cakes had been known from mediaeval times, it was originally a Mothering Sunday tradition. The word simnel probably derived from the latin word simila, meaning fine, wheaten flour with which the cakes were made.
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.
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