Adventures in cake making

For many years I have considered making a Battenberg Cake. I am alarmingly fond of Mr Kipling's diabetes-inducing versions of the same, but wanted to have a go at making a "real" one instead. I made use of one of my favourite cookery writers, Felicity Cloake, who tries and tests multiple versions of traditional dishes to find the "perfect" one. Which led to me to the perfect Battenberg recipe.

So I set about making an appalling mess of my kitchen, including making the marzipan from scratch, which was considerably easier than I'd been expecting.

Raw mixture

I felt it was a bold move to simply fill a single cake tin with two colours (and flavours) of cake mixture, though I was pleased at the lovely colour that freeze-dried raspberries provided to the raw mixture.

Still segregated

The "two" cakes did, to my slight surprise, behave themselves and remain in their own sides of the tin.

Cake surgery

Though lacking the virulent pinkness of a commerical Battenberg, the colours were still pleasingly contrasting after slicing up.

Then came the irritating bit. I'd remembered that I owned raspberry jam, required as glue in this particular recipe. I had not remembered that I only owned seeded raspberry jam. There then ensued a tedious process of small ramekins being fed through the microwave and jam hot enough to melt bitumen being pushed through a tea strainer. Look, I know, in retrospect that heating the jam in a saucepan and using a full-sized sieve would have been more sensible, but all the small pans were dirty, as was the sieve, and I couldn't be arsed to wash them. Frankly it would have been easier to go to the shop and buy some seedless jam, but by the time that became a more obvious solution, there was already jam on the walls, and I was committed to my course.

Jam everywhere

However, stupid decisions aside, the end result was pretty awesome.

Triomphe!

My friends, my husband and I all thought it was delicious.

LittleBear, however, informed me that he didn't really like raspberry, and what with the cake and its glue being raspberry, it wasn't a big hit. In fact, he went so far as to inform me that he prefers the bought one.

At this point I should take you back in time approximately thirty years, to an occasion when my beloved great-aunt also made a Battenberg. My little cousin was sufficiently impressed by this confection that he kindly told her that it was, "just as good as shop bought." This particular occasion has gone down in family folklore. I feel quite proud of myself for not even reaching the heights my great-aunt achieved.

Because I love my LittleBear however, and because it's the school fete tomorrow, I have made another Battenberg. This time it is pink only because of obnoxious quantities of food colouring, and it is held together with apricot jam. LittleBear taste-tested it for me.

The non-raspberry version

"It's not just pretty good. It's fantastic. I even prefer it to Mr Kipling."