Battenberg

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.

To be totally honest, I'd never heard of Battenberg Cake before now. Obviously I've been missing something because when I took it in to my dojo, everyone seemed super excited. I think it was the fun checkered pattern; had them all impressed. I tried explaining it to them, that as long as you followed the set steps, it really wasn't that bad to make. They didn't believe me. But before this challenge, I probably wouldn't have believed me either.

The individual parts didn't seem so bad. Make cake. Cut it up. Glue it back together with jam. Cover with marzipan.

The Marzipan is what gave me pause. My experience with marzipan, both eating and making, is basically none. I didn't know what it was supposed to taste like (one would presume almonds) or what the texture was supposed to be. So obviously I decided to make it instead of search it out in a store.

The cake part of the Battenberg came together pretty easily (and the batter tasted pretty good too!) The biggest thing was jerry rigging the 8x8 pan into a Battenberg making pan. And even that wasn't too difficult thanks to the tips from Mandy.

Now, back to that whole marzipan thing. Yeah... I tried. I really did. My homemade attempt ended up being this crumbly pile of almond-y stuff. Tasty. But definitely not how it was supposed to end up. I assume it had something to do with the sugar/egg white syrup, but who really knows. I thought about trying it again. I even went back to the store to buy more ingredients. And as I was walking down the baking aisle I saw out of the corner of my eye this box. It said marzipan on it... I bet you can guess what ended up in my basket.

Overall I was pretty happy with how things turned out. I kinda wish I'd stuck it through and made the marzipan, but it's probably better for my sanity that I didn't.