Daring Bakers’ June 2012: Battenberg

This month's Daring Bakers' challenge was a very British affair!

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.

I used the recipe pretty much as it was described in the challenge post (I know - a rare occurrence). I made the usual dairy-free-margarine-for-butter substitution, chose the ground almonds option rather than ground rice, and instead of adding food colouring, went with adding some finely chopped dried cherries to one half of my mix.

The finished cake

I baked my mixture in a square roasting tin, with a makeshift partition made of tinfoil and greaseproof paper, as suggested in the challenge instructions - it worked a dream - great tip!

Almond on the left, cherry on the right

Since there was an open block of marzipan in the cupboard from the dessert section of Mr E's amazing three course meal pie (which will be the subject of a future blog post, but I thought I had to share a glimpse of it's glory here...) I used that to cover it.

Three courses, one pie, a feat of pastry engineering!

I thought it looked a bit plain, particularly without the pink chequerboard effect...

Unadorned

So I decided to decorate the top with some freehand piping in dark chocolate icing, topped off with some tiny edible stars.

These are the same swirls I grafitti-ed over all of my high school jotters!

We enjoyed most of it during Sunday brunch with friends and family last weekend, and the remainder has cheered up our packed lunch boxes during the first half of the week.

A Daring Bakers' success I think!