Simnel-ish cake

In the interests of Mothering Sunday / Mother's day, I decided I'd make a Simnel Cake today. Add into this the fact that I love marzipan a lot and that I didn't have the ingredients for my Mum's 'best fruitcake in the world ever' recipe (it really is. I'm just not sure I can make it public yet as it's too precious!!) I decided to go off-piste and try something different.

It did work...

It's comically heavy on the marzipan. But that's how I like it!!!!

It's a light fruitcake with almonds, spices and orange (as that's all I had in the cupboard). But yummy, so I'll record the recipe here to make again another time :)

Let's call it 'Almond and orange simnel cake'. Sounds reasonable?!

Ingredients for a little (6") cake

• 120g plain flour
• 120g caster sugar (although brown would work really nicely)
• 50g ground almonds
• zest of an orange
• Juice of said orange
• approx 250g sultanas / raisins / cherries / whatever dried stuff you have hanging about
• 120g soft butter / marg / panic-microwaved butter
• 2 eggs
• Spices - I used a good grating of fresh nutmeg (please use fresh, it's amazingly billions of times better than ready grated and takes no time at all), a teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 tsp allspice but again, please adapt and modify to your taste

Method: Criminally simple. Preheat oven to 140C, grease and line a 6" tin. Cream butter and sugar, mix in eggs. Separately, mix flour, almonds, spices, zest. Separately again, microwave juice and fruit for a minute til plump and juicy. Mix that all together and plop it into the tin, scooping a mini hollow out on top to allow it to rise and make a fairly flat cake.

Bake for an hour or so until a skewer comes out clean (the metal implement, not the bird. That would be weird, messy, and potentially a health hazard to all concerned.). Decorate with marzipan, disciples (11, not 12, naughty Judas) and devour. LUSH!!!