Battenburg Cake

It’s been a long time since I had battenburg cake.  I have this vague memory of an over sweet cake and dry marzipan – something old ladies like and I’m sure I can hear someone saying “oooh nice slice of battenburg dear?” at a village fair or something similar.  It certainly doesn’t bring back fond memories I’ve got to be honest.  It also looks a bit complicated and I’m not sure that I’m up for complicated today.  Feeling slightly grouchy and not really in the mood for baking – but its Sunday and I’ve got Charlotte primed and ready to go.  There is a lovely picture in the book, so here goes nothing.

We don’t have a Battenburg tin– I know what you’re thinking, we don’t actually have very many tins but a Battenburg tin is quite special and has movable sides so that you can make perfectly sized cake.  Anyway, needless to say, we don’t have one of those but with a little bit of amateur origami we should be able to use our 7inch square tin.  It actually took me 3 attempts and 20 min to perfect a paper divided tin but I was quite pleased with the result.  In the meantime, Charlotte was busy mixing up the sponge   mixture.  “Mummy what’s ground rice?!” What? What!! Oh no! We don’t have any of that – right a quick look on the Internet to find out what else we can use.  Apparently you can substitute either Semolina or ground almonds for ground rice, but if you choose ground almonds then you cake can be a little dry.  Luckily enough, I do have some semolina so we used that instead.

Half the mix is spooned into one side of the tin, then you add the red food colouring to the remaining mixture and put that into the other side.  Now, there didn’t seem to be very much mixture on either side but we decided that it would be okay and anyway, we don’t want it to raise too high as we are going to be building it up afterwards.  35 to 40 mins it said to cook for, but as usual we were ready early.

Marzipan or Almond Paste?

 When the cake is cooled, you have to trim it and make a checkerboard pattern sticking it together with melted apricot jam.  You then wrap it in Marzipan or Almond Paste and Bobs your Uncle, you’re done…mmm not that easy.  If anyone is making this recipe my only piece of advice is – buy Marzipan.  We didn’t but luckily, Mary gives an easy recipe for easy Almond paste in the back of the Baking Bible so we decided that was what we were going to make.

Really easy – it’s just ground almonds, caster sugar, powdered sugar, eggs and almond essence.  You mix it together, give it a little kneed and than wrap it in cling film and bob it into the fridge until you need it. Easy Right?

Ours didn’t look quite right – it was very sticky but we guessed that after some chilling in the fridge it would be fine so we left it in the fridge for an hour while the cake baked and cooled.  It still didn’t seem firm enough but we decided to give it a try.

I rolled the paste out and we placed the jam-coated cake onto it.  Unfortunately, the paste wouldn’t roll around the cake – instead it stuck fast to the counter top and refused to budge.  After 10 mins of trying to lift the paste and a lot of growling and grumbling and a couple of choice expressions, we decided that this paste wasn’t going anywhere except down the waste disposal.  Time to start again, but with a little less liquid in the paste.  So that’s what we did – however, whilst lifting the cake off the original paste, it broke – oh flipping flip!   The second attempt was much better and not as sticky, but to be safe I rolled it out between sheets of baking paper.  The cake was brushed with jam again, sticking the broken bits together, and placed on the paste.  Using the paper, I rolled it over and covered the cake in the paste.  Yeah! It worked!! Well nearly – I didn’t actually roll it out enough and underneath the marzipan doesn’t quite join, but you can't see that can you?

Taste?  Was quite nice with a cup of tea watching the Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant.

Roll on next week, its Lemon Yoghurt Cake
 – must remember to buy Greek Yoghurt!