Easter

Happy Easter Everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and enjoyed your chocolate Easter eggs! Here are a few of mine!

Now, every year, I have a little ritual where I sneak into my room, pull down one of the bright chocolate egg boxes, and open it up. I carefully move the Easter egg and eat the little chocolates that came with it. No one in my family is any the wiser because I always leave a few of the chocolates in the box, making me look innocent, as though I have not opened my egg box. Because my egg is supposedly "not" open I do not have to share it with anyone! *Hugs egg boxes and grins evilly* Am I the only person to do this?

This is one I did "not" eat earlier...

There are many different traditions people follow during Easter time. In the past, it used to be traditional for families to decorate and paint hard boiled eggs. However, since the nineteenth century we have embarked on a new custom, where we buy chocolate eggs which are decorated in colourful foil and bright boxes. Not everyone has jumped onto the chocolate-egg-bandwagon though. Some people do still revert back to the old tradition of painting boiled eggs.

So, apart from the people who celebrate Easter just for the chocolate... Religiously, Easter represents new life and the renewal of life, which people celebrate. Days leading up to Easter is the period known as Lent. Christians fast for 40 days and abstain from rich foods and commodities such as: eggs, chocolate, alcohol, smoking, and gambling. The reason Christians sacrifice certain foods is to remember the sacrifice Jesus made.

Here are a few traditional Easter meals:

Boiled eggs: These are traditionally served on Good Fridays.

Hot cross buns: Hot cross buns are symbolic and are significant to both Pagans and Christians. Christians associate the cross with the crucifixion of Jesus. Whilst Pagans associate the cross with the four different seasons and spring.

Roast lamb: This dish is traditionally made during Jewish Passover, it is also the traditional meat that is served on Easter Sunday.

Simnel Cake: This Cake used to be made by girls who were in service and were given the day off to visit their mothers for Mothers day. Now Simnel cakes are associated with Easter. The reason for this is because it is made with lots of rich and delicious fruits, spices, eggs and marzipan which are all meant to be forbidden during Lent. On the top of an Easter Simnel cake there are normally eleven marzipan balls which represent Jesus's eleven disciples. (Judas is not included in the eleven). In Food and Cooking in Victorian England: a history Andrea Broomfield states that "Although the cake today is known for its balls of marzipan that represent the apostles, that custom was not thought to be practised widely in Victorian England; instead, the cake was decorated with preserved fruits and flowers" (156). It is clear that the Simnel cake has been heavily adapted and has developed new symbolic meanings throughout the years.

Today I am going to give you guys an easy recipe for Simnel cake, so you can try baking this at home yourselves. If you love your Christmas cake you will definitely enjoy a luscious slice of this Simnel cake!!

                                                 


Here is a Mary Berry recipe for Simnel Cake which is also available on the BBC website
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/easter_simnel_cake_82449

Ingredients:

• 100g/4oz glacé cherries
• 225g/8oz butter, softened
• 225g/8oz light muscovado sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 225g/8oz self-raising flour
• 225g/8oz sultanas
• 100g/4oz currants
• 50g/2oz chopped candied peel
• 2 lemons, grated zest only
• 2 tsp ground mixed spice

 

For the filling and topping:

• 450g/1lb marzipan
• 1-2 tbsp apricot jam, warmed

Preparation method

1. Preheat the oven to 150C/280F/Gas 2. Grease and line a 20cm/ 8in cake tin.


2. Cut the cherries into quarters, put in a sieve and rinse under running water. Drain well then dry thoroughly on kitchen paper.


3. Place the cherries in a bowl with the butter, sugar, eggs, self-raising flour, sultanas, currants, candied peel, lemon zest and mixed spice and beat well until thoroughly mixed. Pour half the mixture into the prepared tin.


4. Take one-third of the marzipan and roll it out to a circle the size of the tin and then place on top of the cake mixture. Spoon the remaining cake mixture on top and level the surface.


5. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 2½ hours, or until well risen, evenly brown and firm to the touch. Cover with aluminium foil after one hour if the top is browning too quickly. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out, peel off the parchment and finish cooling on a wire rack.


6. When the cake is cool, brush the top with a little warmed apricot jam and roll out half the remaining marzipan to fit the top. Press firmly on the top and crimp the edges to decorate. Mark a criss-cross pattern on the marzipan with a sharp knife. Form the remaining marzipan into 11 balls.


7. Brush the marzipan with beaten egg and arrange the marzipan balls around the edge of the cake. Brush the tops of the balls with beaten egg and then carefully place the cake under a hot grill until the top is lightly toasted.