Cooking: Simnel Cake

Blimey, it's been a while since I did a cooking post, but cook I did over Easter as I attempted to bake a simnel cake - basically a fruit cake, with marzipan in the middle and on top of it. I was using this recipe (using marzipan in place of the almond paste), and things seemed to be going well at first. I even had eight Marzipan balls on top to represent Bowser and the seven Koopa Kids. (Those who accept Bowser Jr. are heathens.) Then I realised that you're not supposed to put on the top layer of marzipan until the cake's baked. Queue a pained effort to remove the top layer of marzipan from the sticky cake mixture. I just about managed it, damaging a good streak of it in the process and forcing me to flatten the marzipan balls to repair it.

The baking didn't go too smoothly either. The cake ended up being done more than an hour before the recipe said. I guess the fan-assisted oven might have been to blame. When I took it out, it was a little burned around the edges and pretty dried out towards the outside of the cake, especially on one side.

Despite a fairly dry outer layer though, the cake didn't turn out too bad. I'm not sure the marzipan added much (I'm sure the home-made almond paste would have been preferable), but the cake itself was a nice and rich, not too dissimilar to a traditional Christmas cake. Just the thing to have with a nice cup of tea as you come to the end of a Mass Effect 1 & 2 marathon, which is how I spent most of Easter.