Recipe: Battenberg Cake

I love baking and have been planning a special cake to make my first anniversary at work, as well as one of my colleagues birthdays (keep your eyes peeled next week for this marvellous creation!). When I was buying some of the ingredients I needed, I spotted a packet of marzipan with a picture of a battenburg, and knew that was going to be the perfect weekend treat for Adam as he loves it.

Battenberg cake always reminds me of tea times in childhood and birthdays with both my grannies, the perfect almondy jammy soft slice of deliciousness.

Ingredients:

• 140g self raising flour
• 175g soft butter
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 medium free range British Lion eggs
• 50g ground almonds
• 1-2 tsp pink food colouring
• 1 tsp yellow food colouring
• 1 tsp vanilla extract/pod/essence
• 1 tsp strawberry flavouring (optional)
• 200g apricot jam
• 1 pack marzipan
• icing sugar for rolling and dusting

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
2. Combine the butter and sugar and mix until pale and smooth.
3. Crack in the eggs and mix thoroughly, if it looks like it’s curdling slightly, add in a little flour.
4. Mix in the rest of the flour and combine well.
5. Separate the mixture into two bowls, in one add the vanilla and yellow food colouring, in the other add the pink and strawberry. Stir together so that the colour is thoroughout the mixture. With the pink, you may need to add in more food colouring that you originally think- I thought mine was a deep enough red but when it was cooked it was obvious that there wasn’t enough colour!
6. I used two identical sized bread tins lined with grease proof paper for cooking mine in, pink in one, yellow in the other.
7. They took about 20 mins to cook, but you can easily check by inserting a knife and if it comes our clean, they’re done.
8. A really important step is to wait until the cakes are completely cool before carefully cutting off a little of each side and a small portion of the top if it’s risen unevenly so that you have a perfectly square cake. (you can then “test” the off cuts to check they taste ok!) Do this for both colours, making sure they’re the same size, and then slice them both in half longways (so you have 2 yellow oblongs and 2 pink oblongs in total).

To Assemble

1. Heat the jam in a small pan until runny and then let it cool slightly whilst you prepare the marzipan.
2. Lay a large sheet of cling film over your work surface and lightly dust it with icing sugar, squish your marzipan into a rough rectangle in your hands and place it on top of the cling film, sprinkling a little more icing sugar on top before covering with a second piece of cling film (the cling makes it easier to roll without it getting stuck to the work surface and means you can make it tight whilst the jam sets).
3. Roll out your marzipan so that it is roughly half a centimetre thick and is big enough to cover your four stacked cake oblongs.
4. Peel off the top layer of cling film and cover the marzipan in a layer of jam.
5. In the centre of the marzipan, place one yellow oblong and one pink oblong, sandwiching them together with more jam and covering the top also so that you can sandwich the remaining two oblongs alternating colours to make a checkerboard effect.
6. Once all four pieces are stacked and stuck with jam, gently lift one side of the marzipan up, pressing it closely into the side of the cake and onto the top.
7. Do the same for the other side, sticking the two ends of marzipan together to cover the whole cake.
8. Turn the whole battenberg upside down so that the seam is on the bottom and trim any excess marzipan to the length of the cake. Wrap tightly in the cling film so that whilst the jam sets the marzipan sticks together (if it’s completely wrapped up, it can work quite well in the fridge which makes it easier to cut too!)

This post was in collaboration with British Lion Eggs and you can find a whole host of other delicious egg recipes on their website. I’ve also seen other variations on traditional battenberg cake such as orange and lemon battenburg, or triple chocolate battenberg, all which look amazing!