Simnel vs colomba: which is the best cake for Easter?

When it comes to Easter cake, there are two possibilities. From the home front, there’s simnel cake, which has 11 marzipan balls on the top – one for each of the apostles, apart from bad Judas. Or there’s colomba, the Italian dove-shaped panettone-style cake, with all its symbolic resonances. Not that the colomba actually looks like a dove, unless you try very hard – more like a cross with round ends (the wings and tail) and a wonky top (the head). Anyway, that’s the idea. 

So, which is the more perfect? Simnel cake is a lightly spiced and fruited cake, with marzipan in the middle as well as on the top. Made with homemade marzipan, which is easy, it’s a thing of beauty. It seems it was originally created for Mothering Sunday, but it made the easy transition to Easter long ago. The marzipan layer in the middle is the transformative element, making it especially moist and good to keep. The lemon used in several recipes makes it aromatic, including the simple recipe in my favourite out-of-print cookbook, The Cookery Year (Reader’s Digest). Julie Duff (Cakes Regional and Traditional, Grub Street, £15) uses flaked almonds in the mixture and amaretto to flavour. If you stick a fluffy Easter chick on top, with a broken eggshell either side, or a bunch of spring flowers, it’s ever so pretty. It’s fairly dense in texture, so you don’t need to serve much. 

The simnel cake belongs to that class of British fruitcake which is going rapidly out of fashion, being heavier than the modern palate is used to (hence the good keeping quality), and made with dried fruit and mixed peel, traditional cake ingredients many children now avoid. But by comparison with most contemporary cake (and I am thinking Colin the bloody Caterpillar) it’s not overly sweet. I’d serve it with a good madeira or a cream sherry (the Waitrose Lustau rich cream sherry is very good). Or, obviously, tea. 

The Colomba is delicious too, with the texture and taste of a panettone, which we are used to at Christmas, only with candied peel and almonds rather than dried fruit, and with almonds on top. It was first produced industrially by the Milanese company Motta in the 1930s, and took off from there. Gennaro Contaldo, in his excellent Gennaro’s Italian Bakery (Pavilion, £20), gives a lovely version scented with orange and lemon zest. The only difficulty is that you should really have a colomba mould (forma) to make it in the traditional dove shape; they’re available online.  

The colomba is light, delicate and moreish and the commercial ones have good keeping qualities. It’s an excellent breakfast cake, served with coffee, but most people graze on it all day. 

I like both: the simnel has the edge at teatime, the colomba at breakfast. Win, win. 

The best ones to buy

Fortnum and Mason: Traditional simnel cake, £26.95 (in stores), 550g. This is a choice version, made with glacé cherries as well as peel. It’s pleasing to look at, and comes in a good solid box. For smaller appetites there’s also a 190g version for £16.95.

Classic colomba cake, £27.95, 500g. This has a sourdough base, and is light and moreish, with honey and vanilla to flavour. Very prettily packaged. 

Waitrose: Easter colomba cake, £12 (down from £14.50), 750g. This is a bargain colomba, with a good flavour, light texture and crunchy topping – and quite sweet. Made in Italy, and nicely presented. 

Daylesford Organic: Organic Easter simnel cake, £26, 900g. Made with fruit soaked in Earl Grey, plus dried cherries and rye flour, and the marzipan top layer is prettily decorated. I’d say it’ll keep longer than the specified four days. 

Chocolate orange colomba cake, £20, 500g. It was bound to happen that chocolate would be introduced to the colomba to suit contemporary palates, and this one, with chocolate bits and orange peel, is made specially for Daylesford. 

Lina Stores: Colomba classica, Brera Milano, £29.95, 1,120g. This is my favourite colomba, from the Milanese Cova bakery. It’s a classic take on the cake, generously sized and beautifully packaged. 

PS: I haven’t forgotten hot cross buns, about which I could say an awful lot (goat’s cheese and date, anyone?), but they’re for Good Friday.