I like to make a simnel cake at Easter. Apart from them being delicious and very naughty, I feel like one of those young servant girls, venturing into the world of baking, preparing a cake for the home holidays. This is definitely the feeling when I’m in a foreign country and have to improvise some of the ingredients. I also tend to have to improvise in the kitchens I wind up working in.
For instance, there’s no rolling pin in the Ekerö kitchen. A filled car water bottle wrapped in cling wrap had to suffice. Scales, on the other hand, I had to buy along with a cake tin. Then there are the ingredients.
I couldn’t find glace cherries and mixed peel so I used dried mango and raisins. And no currants meant extra sultanas. There was also the problem with self-raising flour. Of course, this is very easily fixed with a bit of baking powder and salt however, I am a bit surprised with recipes that don’t call for plain flour.
As I have said to Mirinda, I think self-raising flour is, like the blue and pink nappies or so-called man sized tissues, an attempt by the capitalists to make people buy things they don’t need at a higher price point.
It’s also weird that the recipe I’ve used for years is by Mary Berry, who I would have thought was much more a traditional baker.
Then, of course, there’s the kitchen itself here at Ekerö. I said to Mirinda today, whatever house we buy here in Sweden, if the kitchen is the same as this one, I’ll not be cooking any more. It is seriously inadequate. Sure, I can cook in it, but do I enjoy it? No.
Still, after the requisite 2.5 hours cooking time, drenching the house is delicious odours, I took the cake out of the oven and finished it off with the marzipan topping and a few faux, marzipan Easter eggs as well as the Swedish Happy Easter greeting, glad påsk on top.
And, apart from it being a bit flat (I could only get a 24cm cake tin when it should have been 20cm), it was delicious and, I think, one of the best ones I’ve made.
