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Battenberg

How to create this classic cake with ease

By Faith StrattonPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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Battenberg may seem intimidating when you first try to attempt it, I felt the same way when I first tried. I've been on the hunt for a recipe that tastes good, yields a professional looking cake but isn't ludicrously complicated. This is what I came up with.

Ingredients

175g softened butter

175g caster sugar

140g self-raising flour

50g ground almonds

½ tsp baking powder

3 eggs

½ tsp almond extract

100g apricot jam

500g marzipan (preferably homemade)

Method

  1. Preheat your oven to 180°C. Grease a Battenberg tin using butter and flour. Greasing the tin with butter first and coating it with a thin layer of flour. Make sure you have covered all of the corners before you move on.
  2. Put the butter, sugar, flour and baking powder in the bowl of a freestanding electric mixture. Combine on a low speed until the butter is completely incorporated and the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
  3. In a separate bowl whisk together, the eggs and the almond extract. Put the freestanding electric mixer on a slow speed and slowly add the eggs, make sure to scrape down the edges of the bowl every couple of additions. Once all of the eggs are added in turn the mixer up to a high speed and beat the mixer until it becomes lighter in colour.
  4. At this point weigh out your mixture and split it in half, put half of the batter back into the bowl of your mixer. Take the other half of your batter and separate it into one half of the Battenberg tin. Smooth out the batter using a small palette knife.
  5. Add pink food colouring to the remaining batter left in your mixer and combine. Once you reach a colour you're happy with, spoon the batter into the remaining slots available in your Battenberg tin. Bake your sponges for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the sponges comes out clean.
  6. Once the sponges are cooked leave them to cool in the tin for 15 minutes. Run a palette knife to run around the edge of the sponges before removing them from the tin and leave them to cool completely.

Assembly

Now for the tricky part – the assembly. I hate shop-bought marzipan, I don’t like the taste or texture, so I make my own. If you would like to make your own marzipan for this recipe, I have written a blog for it here. I will say that homemade marzipan is quite difficult to handle, so if this is your first time making a Battenberg I suggest using shop bought as it is a lot easier to work with.

  1. Put your apricot jam into a bowl and use a small amount (about a tablespoon) of boiling water to loosen the jam and melt any large chunks.
  2. Roll out your marzipan into a rectangle that is 5 mm thick. You want to make sure as you’re rolling that you’re not making the marzipan too wide for the Battenberg sponges. I find having too much excess marzipan at the ends of the sponges makes it more likely for the marzipan to crack, which can cause a lot of problems.
  3. This part is quite difficult to explain in writing so I’ve included some images from my YouTube video below, or feel free to watch it! Use your Battenberg sponges to measure two widths from the edge of the marzipan closest to you, mark the distance by making a faint line in your marzipan.
  4. Use a small palette knife to apply an area of apricot jam the size of the two sponges using your faint line as a guide as to where to start. You don’t want any jam on the end of the marzipan closest to you.
  5. Take one plain Battenberg sponge and one pink Battenberg sponge. Place the sponges on top of the jam and apply a small amount of apricot jam in between the sponges to stick them together.
  6. Apply jam to the top of the sponges and repeat the process with the remaining sponges. Make sure that you alternate the sponge colours to get a checkerboard effect on the cross-section. Apply jam to the exposed sides of the sponges, excluding the ends of the cake.
  7. You want the marzipan to meet at the top edge of the cake that is closest to you. So you need the marzipan behind the cake to come up and over to cover the far side and the top of the cake. Measure the width of the top of the cake and far side and mark it out on the available marzipan, cut away any excess.
  8. Bring the marzipan closest you up to cover the closest side of the cake, making sure it meets the top edge. Then take the marzipan on the other side and fold it up and over to cover the far side and top of the Battenberg.
  9. Roll the Battenberg towards you so the seam where the marzipan meets is hidden.
  10. Using an icing smoother or your hands smooth out the marzipan and make sure that is has adhered to the cake. Try and keep the edges at a 90°, you don’t want to end up with a slanted Battenberg.
  11. At this point your Battenberg may look slightly dull as the sponges are brown, do not worry, this next step fixes all that. Move your Battenberg onto a chopping board and use a large serrated knife to very carefully cut off 2cm from the ends. Make sure to line up your knife so that it is square with the edges of the cake so that you get a good, even cut.
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