This is the first of many recipes for April and hope you enjoy.
Having looked around for an Easter cake that took my eye, I must admit this really did catch me straight away. I am a big fan of the Good Food website and the recipes they show. This is a take on the traditional Easter Simnel cake and the classic Bakewell. I am a fan of both so this recipe was definitely a winner.
I have adapted the recipe slightly as never had a rectangular flan tin so I used my 20 cm round tin. This worked as expected, wonderful, deep and full of flavor. I have also changed a couple of the ingredient quantities from the recipe online as I felt there would have been too much.
The highlight to this recipe was when my family returned home from a trip away to the welcoming smell of almonds, which made them desperate to try, and they thoroughly enjoyed it when we could finally cut the cake up.
I hope you like this recipe as much as we did and here is the link for the original recipe on BBC Good Food.
Simnel Cherry Tart
Ingredients
- 75 g self-raising flour plus extra for dusting
- 500 g sweet short crust pastry
- 140 g Butter softened
- 140 g golden caster sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 75 g ground almonds
- 175 g mixed dried fruit
- 50 g glacé cherries halved
- 1 Zest and juice 1 orange
- 1 tsp. mixed spice
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 6 tsp. cherry jam
- 175 g marzipan ½ cut into small cubes, ½ rolled into 11 balls to represent the apostles
- 50 g icing sugar to decorate
- 25 g flaked toasted almonds
Instructions
- On a floured work surface, roll out the pastry to the thickness of a £1 coin. Lift the pastry over your rolling pin and use to line a 20 cm round flan/tart case, leaving a rim of overhanging pastry. Chill for at least 30 minutes.
- Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Line your pastry case with baking parchment, then fill with baking beans or in my case normal uncooked rice. Blind-bake for 15 minutes, remove the rice and parchment, and bake for a further 10 minutes until the pastry is pale golden and biscuit. Leave to cool.
- Reduce oven to 170C/150C fan/gas 3. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, whisking well between each addition. I used an electric whisk for this. Stir in the flour, almonds, dried fruit, cherries, half the orange zest, and the spices.
- Spread the jam over the base of the tart case, and then dot the cubes of marzipan over the top. Pour over the cake mixture and smooth with a spatula. Bake for up to 60 minutes until golden and risen. Check after 40 minutes with a skewer in the centre of which should come out smooth when cooked. If it is not cooked place back in the oven for 5 minutes and repeat. If it does colour too quickly you can loosely cover with foil and cook as detailed. When cooked place on a cooling wire and leave to cool in the tin.
- If you want to brown the tops of your marzipan balls, heat the grill to medium. Put the marzipan balls on a baking tray lined with baking parchment and place under the grill for 1-2 minutes until golden – make sure you keep an eye on them, as they will burn easily. Let cool. To make the icing, mix the icing sugar with enough orange juice to make a thick, smooth icing. Drizzle the icing over the tart, top with the toasted marzipan balls, flaked almonds and the remaining orange zest. Cut into squares to serve. Will keep for 5 days in a sealed container.
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