Recipe 10: Battenberg Cake

Ah, Battenberg Cake, another childhood memory. Always reminds me of my Granny’s. Granny’s house was only 100 yards over the road and Granny had a sweet tooth so there were always cakes and biscuits to be found. Until this Challenge, I could safely say that baking a Battenberg Cake would be a recipe that I would completely rule out as it’d be way too complicated, right?! Well, that’s what I thought anyway. Here’s how it went…

In fairness, the only complicated part of the whole recipe was sorting out the parchment paper for the baking tin. I must admit that I did have to read the instructions about four times and, just to be safe, I Googled it and found a video on YouTube as to how to sort it out – that was well worth the few minutes of my time. Next, I got onto the mixture which was a fairly standard cake mixture of self-raising flour, eggs, milk, caster sugar and butter. After a mix, I divided the mixture into two bowls and added a few drops of pink food colouring to one of the bowls. Then it was time to pour the two mixtures into the separate sides in the baking tin. So, into the oven the tin went for almost 30 minutes.

Once the cakes were done, I let them cool for 10 minutes before putting them on a wire rack. One thing I have learned for sure when baking is to always ensure the cake is fully cooled before attempting to work with it. With each cake, I cut it in half so that I ended up with four long cakes. I also trimmed the edges of each cake and then assembled them using apricot jam to stick them together. Lastly, I rolled out a block of marzipan and cover the assembled cake with it before tidying it up et voila!

The verdict…

This recipe was a real surprise and I thought Anna Olson would be proud! Admittedly, my Battenberg Cake wasn’t as perfect looking as the ones you can get in the shops but I think it was a good effort all the same. I actually made the cake for St. Patrick’s Day and was tempted to use green food colouring instead of the pink but that’s what I plan to do next year! Dear Sister No.1 was delighted as Battenberg is her favourite cake so she gave my efforts full marks. Dear Husband was seriously impressed as he probably holds Battenberg in the same esteem as I do. It tasted great - really great. Full marks all round.

 

The best thing I can say about this recipe is that there probably isn’t a better one that will actually make you feel like you can bake (even if you can’t!). It really vanished the perception I had that making a Battenberg would be too complicated. Well worth the effort…