38. Having your cake ... and eating it !

Key words/phrases: Good Friday and Easter Day, Hot Cross buns, Simnel cake, Easter eggs, Mothering Sunday.

No. 38

Hot Cross buns are no longer solely associated with Good Friday and/or the Easter holiday weekend are they ? I suppose that it's because so many of us have hankered after them all year round that bakers and manufacturers have come to see them as a permanent way of keeping their profits up.

But what of simnel cake ? Did you enjoy a slice or two of this traditional cake during Easter ?

Simnel cake - in case you are not very familar with it - is a light, spicy, fruit-cake containing an INTERNAL layer of marzipan topped with another thick layer of yellow almond paste or yellow icing and decorated with eleven marzipan or sugar balls or flowers.

These are probably the yellowest cakes that you will have spotted in your baker's window over Easter and the edible decorations are usually positioned in a circle representing the apostles at the Last Supper. Judas, the traitor is not included in the circle and the largest central decoration is there to represent Christ.

The word 'Simnel' by the way reportedly comes from the Latin word 'simila', which is the name given to a very fine flour made from wheat.

Do you remember eating slices of simnel cake or toasted and buttered hot cross buns at Joyce Green on Good Friday when the hospital was still functioning ? No ? .... well neither can I !

I have no recollection whatsoever of either hot cross buns or simnel cake ever being “on offer” to patients or staff at Easter-time and this is puzzling me ?

I can understand the absence of hot cross buns on the wards because of the difficulties of toasting and serving them hot in a ward setting, but because simnel cake is a served cold - like Christmas cake -I’m not sure why it never featured on the tea-time or evening meal menu for patients and/or staff ? Or perhaps these customs WERE celebrated on certain tradition-orientated wards ?

Does anyone remember chocolate eggs or special buns or cakes being distributed on the wards at Easter ? Easter eggs were almost certainly distributed on Ward 7A, the children’s ward but as to any other part of the hospital I have no recollections of any other special Easter titbits being given out or served, do you ?

Over the years simnel cake has become associated with Easter Day but apparently it was originally made for Mothering Sundays.

In the 17th century Mothering Sunday was a day when young men and women who worked “in service” were allowed the day off to go and visit their families and because this was something of a special holiday it seems that the girls “in service” would often bake their mothers a simnel cake as a gift and take it home with them.

A tradition then evolved whereby each daughter would give the cakes to her mother as a thank you present although in practice these would not usually be eaten until Easter Day.

Thus the baking of simnel cakes for their mothers on Mothering Sunday was also used - openly or discreetly - to monitor each girl's cooking skills because the cake would not actually be eaten until Easter Sunday when whole family would take note to see if the cake was still moist.

But notwithstanding the strange fact that special cakes and buns never seemed to appear as part of the hospital's Easter catering arrangements I can still remember visitors bringing in food and chocolate for their bed-bound relatives to help them to celebrate Easter.

After all that is one of the ways that we tend to celebrate special occasions, isn’t it … by eating !

So Happy Easter and happy memories too as you look backwards.