The Tea Act

The Tea Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. Its principal over objective was to reduce the massive surplus of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive. A related objective was to undercut the price of tea smuggled into Britain's North American colonies. This was supposed to convince the colonists to purchase Company tea on which the Townshend duties were paid, thus implicitly agreeing to accept Parliament's right of taxation. The Act granted the Company the right to directly ship its tea to North America and the right to the duty-free export of tea from Britain, although the tax imposed by the Townshend Acts and collected in the colonies remained in force. It received the royal assent on May 10, 1773.

Colonists in the Thirteen Colonies recognized the implications of the Act's provisions, and a coalition of merchants and artisans similar to that which had opposed the Stamp Act 1765 mobilized opposition to delivery and distribution of the tea. The company's authorised consignees were harassed, and in many colonies successful efforts were made to prevent the tea from being landed. InBoston, this resistance culminated in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when colonists (some disguised as Native Americans) boarded tea ships anchored in the harbour and dumped their tea cargo overboard. Parliamentary reaction to this event included passage of the Coercive Acts, designed to punish Massachusetts for its resistance, and the appointment of GeneralThomas Gage as royal governor of Massachusetts. These actions further raised tensions that broke out into the American War of Independence in April 1775.

Parliament passed the Taxation of Colonies Act 1778, which repealed a number of taxes (including the tea tax that underlay this act) as one of a number of conciliatory proposals presented to the Second Continental Congress by the Carlisle Peace Commission. The commission's proposals were rejected. The Act effectively became a "dead letter", but was not formally removed from the books until passage of the Statute Law Revision Act 1861.

Simnel Cake

Simnel Cake was not originally baked at Easter but on Mothering Sunday as a kind of mid-Lent treat.

Simnel cake is a light fruit cake, similar to a Christmas cake, covered in marzipan, and eaten at Easter in England and Ireland. A layer of marzipan or almond paste is also baked into the middle of the cake. On the top of the cake, around the edge, are eleven marzipan balls to represent the true apostles of Jesus; Judas is omitted. In some variations Christ is also represented, by a ball placed at the center.

The cake is made from these ingredients: white flour, sugar, butter, eggs, fragrant spices, dried fruits, zest and candied peel.The French version of this cake is more of a Bun or muffin size and decorated with sugar crosses on top. These were their equivalent of the English Hot Cross Bun.

Simnel cakes have been known since medieval times, and were originally a Mothering Sunday tradition, when young girls in service would make one to be taken home to their mothers on their day off. The word simnel probably derived from the Latin word simila, meaning fine, wheaten flour with which the cakes were made. A popular legend, however, attributes the cake’s creation to the English pretender Lambert Simnel, who according to legend devised it during the time in which he was forced to work in Henry VII’s kitchens.

Different towns had their own recipes and shapes of the Simnel cake. Bury, Devizes and Shrewsbury produced large numbers to their own recipes, but it is the Shrewsbury version that became most popular and well known.

Ingredients

1 x 100 g pack whole blanched almonds

1 x 500 g pack golden marzipan

8 oz (225 g) plain flour

3 level teaspoons baking powder

1 rounded teaspoon mixed spice

5 oz (150 g) light soft brown sugar

5 oz (150 g) butter, well softened

2 tablespoons milk

3 large eggs, beaten

1 egg yolk, beaten

1 x 411 g jar mincemeat

12 oz (350 g) mixed dried fruit

2 oz (50 g) whole candied peel, chopped

grated zest 1 orange

grated zest 1 lemon

icing sugar for dusting

1 x 250 g pack ready-to-roll icing

1 dessertspoon redcurrant jelly

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 6, 400°F (200°C) to roast the almonds, then lower it to gas mark 2, 300°F (150°C) when you come to cook the cake.

Equipment You will also need an 8 inch (20cm) round loose-based cake tin, greased with base and side lined. Method You need to begin by toasting the almonds to give them some extra crunch and flavour. So spread them out on a baking sheet and pop them in the pre-heated oven for 8-10 minutes. Don't guess the time, please use a timer – they need to be lightly toasted to a golden brown colour and you could end up with an expensive mistake if you try and guess! Now remove the almonds and reduce the oven temperature to gas mark 2, 300°F (150°C).Then, when the almonds are cool, chop them roughly. Next unwrap the marzipan, cut the block into two halves, re-wrap one of them for use later and chop the remaining half into ½ inch (1 cm) cubes. Toss them in 1 tablespoon of the flour from the cake. Now for the cake. Take your largest mixing bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and spice in, then simply place all the ingredients, except the marzipan, icing sugar, icing, redcurrant jelly and egg yolk, into the bowl. Then, take an electric hand whisk for preference or, failing that, a wooden spoon, and give everything a really good mixing – which will take about 2-3 minutes – to get it all perfectly and evenly distributed. Finally, gently fold in the squares of marzipan and any remaining flour. Now, using a rubber spatula, spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, levelling the surface with the back of the spatula. Place a suitably sized square of double greaseproof paper with a hole the size of a 50p piece in the centre over the top. Place the cake on the centre shelf of the oven and bake for 2¾-3¼ hours at the lower temperature of gas mark 2, 300°F (150°C). Have a look after 2¾ hours – the cake is cooked when the centre feels springy when lightly pressed. When it is cooked, leave it in the tin for 30 minutes before turning it out on to a wire rack to cool. For the decoration, first dust a working surface with icing sugar and roll out the icing to the same size as the top of the cake (you can use the base of the tin as a guide here). Then brush the top of the cake with redcurrant jelly and fit the icing on top of the cake, pressing it securely all round and using a rolling pin to level it as much as possible. Trim off any overhanging pieces. Roll out the reserved marzipan to a rectangle about 9 x 6 inches (23 x 15 cm), then cut it into 12 long strips about ½ inch (1 cm) wide for the lattice topping. Assembling the lattice goes as follows: first lay half the strips across the cake, leaving about ¾ inch (2 cm) gap between each strip. Then begin to thread the rest of the strips, one at a time, under and over the first ones, going at right angles. Finally, use some scissors to snip the overhanging marzipan away and press firmly all round to make the edges as neat as possible. Now pre-heat the grill, and when it's really hot (it will take at least 10 minutes to come up to full blast), brush the marzipan strips with the egg yolk and place the cake under the grill, about 4 inches (10 cm) from the heat. Give it about 30 seconds, watching it like a hawk, until it turns a toasted brown colour. The cake is now ready to serve or be stored. It looks very pretty if you tie a ribbon round the circumference and decorate with some Easter flowers.