Simnel Cupcakes

I had been wanting to making a mini version of the traditional simnel cake since Easter eggs went on sale in Tesco. However, before I went about doing it myself I discovered Emma from baketheneat.com (check out her fantastic blog!) had created the most perfect simnel cupcakes that were exactly what I had in mind. I left out the booze but they were still fantastic and went down a treat with both mine and Hannah's families.

Ingredients

(Taken straight from baketheneat.com all credit to Emma!)

150g unsalted butter
150g light brown sugar (I used demerara)
4 medium eggs
200g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mixed spice
zest of 1 lemon
350g dried mixed fruit (I used 100g glace cherries, 100g sultanas, 75g currents, 75g seedless raisins)
1 tbsp rum (I omitted this)
500g marzipan
2 tbsp light jam (I used Hartley's seedless apricot jam)

Directions

I am big on giving credit where credit is due so for full directions pop over to baketheneat.com - but here are some photos of my simnel cupcakes with some general directions!

Hannah deems this to be a very attractive picture, I, however, do not see the appeal of uncooked cake mixture!

Spoon a little bit of mixture into each bun case then add some grated marzipan (200g of marzipan should be grated, the rest saved for later)

Add another teaspoon of mixture to enclose the marzipan in the middle of the cake

Just out of the oven!

Some of my cupcakes had marzipan oozing out of the tops - this is a good thing, a very good thing indeed mmmmm

Roll out the remaining marzipan until it is about 1/4 cm thick and cut 12 circles using a 2" diameter (give or take) cutter

Secure the marzipan circules on to the top of the simnel cupcakes with apricot jam (or may I suggest baketheneat's vanilla and yellow plum jam)

Then create marzipan balls by rolling it between your palms and stick them around the top of the cake with apricot jam (or a similar light jam) - Simnel cakes traditionally have 11 marzipan balls on top to represent the disciples (minus Judas) but I only managed to make 60 balls hense the lack of disciples on my cakes, I am sorry!

I went out too soon after taking the simnel cakes out of the oven to marzipan them properly so this one was slapped up dead quick (to devour even more quickly) but it was then when I discovered the oozing marzipan in the centre and ohhh mmmmmm I had to take a picture to get across the full glory of these wonderful cakes!

and here is one last look at the final product! Bake and enjoy! mmmmmmmmmm

 P.S. Happy belated Easter! And thanks again to Emma for producing such a wonderful recipe!