Mandy of What The Fruitcake?! came to our rescue last minute to present us with the Battenberg Cake challenge! She highlighted Mary Berry’s techniques and recipes to allow us to create this unique little cake with ease.
"This cake has far grander beginnings than tea with teddy. It was actually created as a wedding cake for royalty. The first Battenberg cake was made to celebrate the marriage of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Victoria, to husband Prince Louis of Battenberg. It’s traditionally flavoured with almond and has the signature Battenberg markings, that is, the yellow and pink squares (said to represent the four princes of Battenberg). The strips of sponge are glued together using jam (normally apricot) and the whole cake is covered in marzipan. Sometimes the edges are crimped and the top is patterned with a knife."
I chose a recipe given in the challenge PDF - the Coffee and Walnut Battenberg. The principle how you do this is easy - bake the sponge, 'glue' it together with the coffee buttercream and cover with marzipan. Mandy provides lots of pictures how to do it right (just have a look at her blog) and even recipes for modelling chocolate if you don't like marzipan. I was in a hurry to get done with this, and marzipan was the fastest thing of all (otherwise I would have tried to use white modelling chocolate).
As I didn't have a special Battenberg tin, I baked two flat rectangle cake sponges, cut them into eight cubic stripes each and assembled 'four in one'. It looked really nice but boy - there were loads of sugar and calories on that plate in the end ...
