Article: Shopping: Check it Out - SIMNEL CAKES AND COLOMBAS

IN JUST a few days' time Easter will be upon us. Chocoholics will already have been dropping unsubtle hints concerning the importance of celebrating the occasion with an egg or two.

But what if you don't like chocolate; how can you mark the end of Lenten abstinence? By eating cake, of course. The British have baked Simnel cakes at Easter for hundreds of years - the first literary reference to them occurs in the reign of Edward the Confessor. Rich, spicy fruit cakes, they are decorated with 11 marzipan balls to symbolise Jesus's faithful disciples.

The thought of buying all the ingredients to make a cake can be off- putting, especially if you get the cooking bug only once in a blue moon. By ...

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