Battenburg cake

Our gang is like rent-a-crowd and a catering company all in one. We love it ! We love cooking, we love eating and we love parties. So we had a baby shower for who we now know as baby Scott. Here is the recipe for one of the many things baked for the shower, a battenburg cake with pink and blue squares. The almond paste uses water and a little sherry instead of raw eggs for the mammies-to-be. By the way, this is the most frustrating cake to make. It looks so pretty but it is difficult to put together. So from now on, I'm sticking with Mr. Kipling next time ;-) 

Ingredients

175g butter or block margarine, softened

175g caster sugar

few drops vanilla extract

3 eggs, beaten

175g self raising flour

225g almond paste: 
-225g icing sugar

-225g caster sugar

-450g ground almonds

-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

-water mixed with sherry and 2tsp lemon juice

caster sugar , to dredge

225g apricot jam, melted
Baby themed decorations(I used pink and blue feet from Kitchen Complements)

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees celsius.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the vanilla extract. Add the eggs, a little at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually sift all the flour over the mixture and fold it in lightly. 

Grease and line a 30 x 20cm swiss roll tin. I made double the amount of mixture to make one pink sponge and one blue sponge. But you can make this mixture and pleat the baking paper lengthways in the swiss roll tin. You will need to split the mixture between 2 bowls then add pink colouring to one bowl and blue into the other one and spoon the pink mixture into one side of the swiss roll tin and the blue into the other side.

I used 15 drops of pink liquid food colouring made by PME arts and crafts. The colour was peach more than pink so you might like to use more drops of pink colour. The blue colour was Gentian by Squires Kitchen Professional. It only took 6 drops to get a deep colour but it was a green-blue colour so try another blue colour.


Depending on the food colouring you are using gradually add the pink colour to half the mix until desired depth of color is achieved. Do the same to the other half of the mixture with the blue colouring. Turn the mixtures into the swiss roll tin(s).

Bake for 40-45mins until well risen, firm to the touch and beginning to shrink away from the sides of the tin. Turn out and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Next make the almond paste.
Sift the icing sugar into a bowl and mix in the caster sugar and the ground almonds. Add the vanilla extract, water, sherry and lemon juice and mix to a stiff dough. Take care not to add too much liquid, it makes the paste very difficult to work with. Knead lightly. Cover until ready to use.

Assembling the battenburg:

When the sponges are cold, trim the cakes to an equal size and cut each in half lengthways, then quarter if you used double the mixture. Sprinkle caster sugar on the work surface and roll out the almond paste to a rectangle 30x40cm. Spread a thin layer of melted apricot jam on the rolled out almond paste. Place one strip of the pink cake on the almond paste so it lies up against the short edge of the paste. Carefully brush the top and long side of the cake with the jam. Place a strip of blue beside the pink strip. Then stack alternative coloured strips of cake on top on the bottom strips. 

Have a bowl of icing sugar beside you when rolling the almond paste around the layers of cake. Press the paste firmly against the cake. In a hot kitchen, with hot hands, this is a very sticky and messy exercise. So I had to keep brushing my hands with the icing sugar.

Now seal and trim the join and trim the edges using a sharp knife.

  Dredge with caster sugar and decorate.