Battenberg Cake

• servings: 10 servings
• active time: 1 hour
• total time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients

275 g (2 ¼ cups) self-raising flour

220 g (1 cup) caster (superfine) sugar

80 g (⅔ cup) ground almonds

1 ¼ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

190 g (⅔ cup + 2 Tbsp) vegan block butter/margarine (I use Naturli Vegan Block or Stork block) (melted)

190 ml (⅔ cup + 2 Tbsp) unsweetened non-dairy milk (soy is best) (room temperature)

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

¾ tsp almond extract

pink or red gel food colouring*

apricot jam

500 g (17 ½ oz) marzipan

icing sugar for rolling

Directions

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4. Grease a 20cm/ 8in square cake tin.

Cut a piece of baking parchment about twice as wide as the tin - 20x40cm. Fold it in half widthways then push up the centre fold to make a pleat at least as high as the tin. Fold a piece of tin foil over several times into a thick piece the same width as the tin and height as the pleat. Place it inside the pleat and then use this to line the tin, making sure that the pleat runs down the centre, dividing the tin into two smaller ones. Leave a bit of parchment overhanging on either side of the tin to make it easier to remove the cakes from the tin later. If your tin isn't non-stick then you will also need to line the other two sides with strips of baking parchment. (See post above for step-by-step photos).

Place the self-raising flour, caster sugar, ground almonds, baking powder and salt in a large bowl and whisk to combine.

In a jug, whisk together the melted butter, milk and vanilla and almond extracts.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and whisk to combine. Do not over-beat the batter.

Using a scale for accuracy, pour half of the batter into a separate bowl and stir in a little bit of food colouring until you reach the desired shade, be careful not to add too much.

Scrape the coloured batter into one half of the tin, and the uncoloured batter into the other half. Spread them level then bake for 30-35 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Leave the cakes to cool in the tin for 20 minutes then carefully lift them out onto a wire rack using the overhanging sides and the centre pleat. It really helps to have a second person to help you do this as the cakes are delicate when warm. Peel off the parchment and leave them on the wire rack to cool completely.

Once the cakes are completely cold, trim the tops of them to level if necessary, they should be exactly the same height. (Mine baked up completely flat and I used a scale to divide the mixture in half so no trimming necessary).

Place one cake on top of the other and trim the long edges to neaten them. If you want perfect squares then use a tape measure - the cakes should be twice as wide as they are high. Mine were 4cm high so I trimmed them to be 8cm wide.

Slice the cakes in half lengthways so you have two long strips of each colour.

Spread a thin layer of apricot jam over the long side of one of the strips and stick a strip of the opposite colour to it.

Spread a thin layer of jam over the top of both of those strips and stick the remaining strips on top, spreading more jam in between the two, to form a chequered pattern - pink above white and white above pink.

Dust a surface with icing sugar and roll out the marzipan into a rectangle about 20x38cm. Trim one of the short edges to neaten it.

Spread the top of the cake with jam then place it, jam side down, against the trimmed short edge. Spread jam over the rest of the cake (except the short ends).

Carefully roll the cake up in the marzipan so that it is fully encased. Trim the excess so that it overlaps about halfway across the cake. Brush it with a little bit of water and gently press it down to seal. Flip the cake so that the join is on the bottom.

Use a sharp knife to slice a piece off either end to neaten the cake and reveal the pattern. If you like you can gently score lines on the top of the cake with a knife to make a crisscross pattern.