Battenberg Cake

Bereiding

1. 1

   verwarm de oven voor op 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 maak the amandel sponge, doe 175 g boter, suiker, bloem, amandelmeel 50 g amandelen, ½ tsp bakpoeder, eieren 3 eggen, vanille and ¼ teaspoon amandel extract in a large bowl. klop with an electric klop tot the meng comes together smoothly. Scrape into the tin, spreading to the corners, and bak for 25-30 mins – when you poke in a skewer, it should come out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 mins, then breng over to a wire rack to finish cooling while you maak the second sponge.

2. 2

   For the pink sponge, line the tin as above. meng all the ingredients together as above, but don’t voeg toe ¼ teaspoon amandel extract. schep erdoor ½ tsp pink food colouring. Then scrape it all into the tin and bak as before. Cool.

3. 3

   To assemble, verhit the jam in a small pan tot runny, then sieve. Barely trim two opposite edges from the amandel sponge, then goed trim a third edge. Roughly measure the height of the sponge, then cutting from the goed-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.

4. 4

   Take 2 x amandel slices and 2 x pink slices and trim so they are all the same length. Roll out one 1 kg marzipan block on a surface lightly dusted with Dusting poedersuiker to just over 20cm wide, then houd rolling lengthways tot the marzipan is roughly 0.5cm thick. Brush with 200 g abrikoos jam, then lay a pink and an amandel snijd 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.

5. 5

   Carefully lift up the marzipan and glad over the cake with your hands, but laat a small marzipan schep erdoor along the bottom edge before you stick it to the first side. Trim opposite side to match size of schep erdoor, 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.

6. 6

   Assemble second Battenberg and houd in an airtight box or goed wrapped in cling film for up to 3 days. Can be frozen for up to a month.