Friends who live at the top of the village invited us for lunch, a fish fondue and for dessert, a simnel cake.
Although I'd never heard of it, the cakes have been around since medieval days.
It's light fruit cake (nothing like the horrors passed around during American Christmases) with two layers of marzipan, one in the middle and one on top.
Our hostess had cut out a little Easter marzipan bunny in the middle and marzipan roses as well. She didn't totally cover the top with marzipan in case some didn't like.
The idea is to have for the middle Sunday of Lent, also known as Refreshment Sunday, Mothering Sunday, Sunday of the five loaves. Okay, so it was the last Saturday before the end of Lent, but it didn't effect the taste.
The word simenl was first seen in print in 1226 in the sense of the Latin simila or fine flour. A medieval scholar from Oxford and the University of Toulouse thought the word simnel was equal to placenta.
No matter the meaning...the cake was good.
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