Hello everybody!

Wow I’ve had a long break from blogging… post on that very soon! But I thought I would pop on a wonderful little recipe for battenberg cake which I made today. Enjoy!

Ingredients

4oz softened butter

4oz caster sugar

4oz self raising flour

2 large eggs

1 tsp baking powder

2oz ground rice

Red food colouring

Almond paste if desired

Apricot jam

Marzipan

Icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 160°c, and grease and line a square baking tin. The tin I use is an 18cm square tin, not too deep. Add the butter, sugar, flour, eggs, baking powder and ground rice into a mixing bowl and beat for about two minutes, or until it is smooth. Have a boogie to Beyoncé as you beat the mixture, it’ll go quick as a flash. Split the mixture in half. Put half of the mixture carefully onto the right side of your baking tray. Add a few drops of red food colouring into the mixture you have left in the bowl. Mix it until it is a deep pink colour. If you were really fun you could mix things up and have some different coloured sponge in your Battenberg; go wild you only live once. Carefully spoon this mixture onto the other side of the tin, make sure the line between the two colours is smooth, and make sure your mixture is even. Smooth over the surface.

Pop it into the oven and bake for about 35-40mins. Once it is cooked, check it springs back when touched, and maybe try the skewer test like I did. Leave it to cool for a few minutes in the tin, then put it on a cooling tray to fully cool down. Remove baking paper. Once your sponge is cool, trim the sides and cut it down the middle so you have two sponges each a different colour. Then cut the sponges in half again, so you have four long pieces of sponge, two of each colour. Warm the jam in a pan, and use this to stick your sponges together in a checkerboard style. Pop some jam on the top of the sponge, ready for the marzipan. Sprinkle some icing sugar on your surface, and roll out you marzipan. This can be tricky and I had a small disaster when my marzipan decided to stick completely to the surface. After wailing for a moment I was handed a scraper to scrape it off the surface and start again. Dust your surface well. Once rolled out, pop your sponge on one side of the marzipan, then wrap the marxipan round the cake. Make sure you pinch the corners and edge so it stays together.

As a finishing touch, you could score a pattern on the top of the Battenberg, or sprinkle some icing sugar on top. Pop the kettle on, call your mates and have a gossip with a lovely cup of tea and some yummy Battenberg, and listen as your friends shower you with baking compliments. Job done.

NOMMY.

Love Sophie xx