Battenberg cake

Sarah Cook's traditional Battenberg cake is a delicious project for an afternoon in the kitchen

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Sarah Cook

13 ratings 5

Recipe by Sarah Cook

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Difficulty and servings

Makes 2 cakes, each cuts into 10 slices

Preparation and cooking times

Prep 2 hrs

Cook 1 hr

Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and line the base and sides of a 20cm square tin with baking parchment (the easiest way is to cross 2 x 20cm-long strips over the base). To make the almond sponge, put the butter, sugar, flour, ground almonds, baking powder, eggs, vanilla and almond extract in a large bowl. Beat with an electric whisk until the mix comes together smoothly. Scrape into the tin, spreading to the corners, and bake for 25-30 mins - when you poke in a skewer, it should come out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 mins, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling while you make the second sponge.
For the pink sponge, line the tin as above. Mix all the ingredients together as above, but don't add the almond extract. Fold in some pink food colouring. Then scrape it all into the tin and bake as before. Cool.
To assemble, heat the jam in a small pan until runny, then sieve. Barely trim two opposite edges from the almond sponge, then well trim a third edge. Roughly measure the height of the sponge, then cutting from the well-trimmed edge, use a ruler to help you cut 4 slices each the same width as the sponge height. Discard or nibble leftover sponge. Repeat with pink cake.
Take 2 x almond slices and 2 x pink slices and trim so they are all the same length. Roll out one marzipan block on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar to just over 20cm wide, then keep rolling lengthways until the marzipan is roughly 0.5cm thick. Brush with apricot jam, then lay a pink and an almond slice side by side at one end of the marzipan, brushing jam in between to stick sponges, and leaving 4cm clear marzipan at the end. Brush more jam on top of the sponges, then sandwich remaining 2 slices on top, alternating colours to give a checkerboard effect. Trim the marzipan to the length of the cakes.
Carefully lift up the marzipan and smooth over the cake with your hands, but leave a small marzipan fold along the bottom edge before you stick it to the first side. Trim opposite side to match size of fold, then crimp edges using fingers and thumb (or, more simply, press with prongs of fork). If you like, mark the 10 slices using the prongs of a fork.
Assemble second Battenberg and keep in an airtight box or well wrapped in cling film for up to 3 days. Can be frozen for up to a month.

Bake it different

Swap almond extract for zest of 2 lemons and 1 tbsp lemon juice in first sponge. Swap pink colouring for zest 1 orange and 1 tbsp orange juice in second sponge (add orange food colouring if you like). Assemble with lemon curd.

PER SERVING

524 kcalories, protein 7g, carbohydrate 71g, fat 25 g, saturated fat 10g, fibre 2g, sugar 61g, salt 0.5 g

Recipe from Good Food magazine, March 2011.

Latest comments and suggestions

Results 21-34

Golda Lowden

28 February 2012

Golda Lowden commented on this recipe

Just make this and very disapointed as i left the cakes in the trays to long and they went soggy with butter.wont be trying it again

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Chocolatechunks

04 April 2012

Chocolatechunks commented on this recipe

I love this recipe! It was even better with the orange and lemon version!

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rebecca211081

03 July 2012

rebecca211081 commented on this recipe

Im so excited to try this i tried it for the first time in UK last year and i love it, you cant buy this in Perth Australia

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JanandSoph

05 August 2012

JanandSoph commented on this recipe

To get a good colour use red food colouring and just use a little we use home 2 bake food coluring red keep adding till you get a decent colur its a gel rather than a liquid so use a cocktail stick a little goes a long way and be careful for it does stain x

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Emma

07 August 2012

Emma rated and commented on this recipe

Brilliant recipie! Only made one, and just halfed the recipe,made plenty though.

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rachie_k

10 August 2012

rachie_k rated and commented on this recipe

10/10 - Watch out Mr Kipling! Found this recipe easy to follow, and the cakes even easier to eat! Went down a storm with the family even those who said they didn't like marzipan loved it.

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Jen_02

28 August 2012

Jen_02 commented on this recipe

Fantastic! Require a lot of patience and precision to get it looking perfect but well worth it and anyone can do it. Homemade marzipan really makes it a show-stopper. I made the orange and lemon version and everybody loved it. I added a little colouring to the orange but not quite enough so the difference in the colour was negligible, it didn't matter but it's part of the fun of battenberg.

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rmellor18

02 November 2012

rmellor18 rated and commented on this recipe

I used natural food colouring which turned the cake orange rather than pink when baked, but still looked nice and tasted yummy.

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Nuclear.Penguin

27 January 2013

Nuclear.Penguin rated and commented on this recipe

I made this a couple days ago as my brother in law loves Battenberg. I must say, it went down a total treat. I didn't have the correct size tin so I used a loaf tin and that worked okay. I could only make one large Battenberg with this and I used one 500g pack to cover it up and I had some left over at the end I used for decoration. However the end result was delicately flavoured and gorgeous. It was given the seal of approval my family and the girlfriends family, plus my brother in law, sister, an three kids. Defiantly will make this again.

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Georgina

27 March 2013

Georgina commented on this recipe

I tired this recipe yesterday. The cakes are delicious but the food colouring cooked off. How can I ensure that I get the pink cake, Pink.

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Camille

31 March 2013

Camille rated and commented on this recipe

Good recipe but I did end up searching for some videos on how to cover it neatly in the marzipan, which is easy enough just takes time. It also makes a lot of cake, in fact I made half the amount and ended up making one and a half cakes... although it went very fast so I probably should of made the full amount! It's a shame buying marzipan is expensive.

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Peggy33

04 April 2013

Peggy33 commented on this recipe

Going to make one tomorrow, my late Mam used to make this cake and called it a russian layer cake and have her tin with the divider up the middle- she coverd up the ends also and we used to row over who the the end bits!!!

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Eleanor

12 April 2013

Eleanor commented on this recipe

where it says 'for the keen cook' it really means it... it is NOT something you can just throw together for pudding for the family (which is what i tried to do) it tastes fine but unless you're really into the arty side of baking it's far too tricky and boring!

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Louise

28 April 2013

Louise rated and commented on this recipe

Lovely. Love the fact that the recipe makes two cake. Froze one of them, portioned, ready for lunch boxes. Recipe was easy to follow and came out perfectly. Used a whole teaspoon of pink food colouring and pink came out perfectly x

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