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Battenburg Cake

I love a bit of marzipan, when we were younger my sister and I used to trade icing for marzipan when eating our Christmas cake slices, the rich almond taste and texture gets a big yes from me. So no surprise that one of the cakes on my 'to do' list was battenburg - it is an absolute classic, and a staple of an afternoon tea I think. When speaking to my Spanish partner about baking this, he had never heard of it, but thought it sounded German - I did a little reading and turns out that the cake was invented in honour of the marriage in 1884 between Queen Victoria's granddaughter and Prince Louis of Battenburg. The 4 square represent the four Battenburg princes, although we don't know why they are pink and yellow, but this explains the German link, you learn something new everyday!

Ingredients:

 175g soft butter
175g caster sugar
175g self raising flour
3 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Red food colourant
2 tbsp apricot jam
A pack of ready to roll marzipan

Method:

 Preheat your over to 190C/ 170C fan assisted. The first part of this recipe is the most complicated, and this is preparing your tin. Cut out a piece of baking paper and fold it in the middle to make a divide, which will keep your pink and yellow sponges separate. Put the baking paper into your cake tin.

 Place the butter, sugar, flour, eggs and vanilla into a bowl and beat well. Split the batter into two bowls, and mix a couple of drops of food colouring into one of the halves to create the pink batter. Make sure this is quite pink as it may fade a bit in the oven. Pour the batter into your preprepared tin, yellow batter on one half of the divide, pink batter on the other then place in the oven for around 25 minutes.


When cooked, remove from the oven, turn out of the tin and allow to cool fully before assembling. 

 To assemble, put the two sponges on top of each other and trim the edges so that they are the same size. Cut the sponges in two, so you have the four long rectangles.

 Warm up the jam and using a pastry brush cover the long sides of the sponges then stack together to make the chequerboard pattern.

 Roll out the marzipan on a lightly dusted work surface until it is large enough to wrap around the sponge (if you are good at wrapping presents this will be easy!). Brush the marzipan with more jam, and then place the assembled sponges on top and wrap the marzipan around. Squeeze the cake slightly so that the marzipan sticks to the sponge, then turn over to hide the seam.

 Cut a thin slice from each end so that the chequerboard effect is seen properly.


Take a slice for yourself, sit back with a cup of tea and enjoy!


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