Battenberg Cake
A classic British Battenberg cake with alternating pink and almond sponge squares encased in sweet apricot-glazed marzipan — tender, buttery and visually striking for teatime or celebrations.
Servings
4
Difficulty
Easy
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Ingredients
main
- 350 g butter
- 350 g caster sugar
- 280 g self-raising flour
- 100 g ground almonds
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 6 pcs eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 0.25 tsp almond extract
- 0.5 tsp pink food colouring
- 200 g apricot jam
- 1000 g marzipan
- icing sugar (for dusting)
Directions
- Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and line a 20cm square tin with baking parchment.
- Make the almond sponge: beat butter, sugar, flour, ground almonds, baking powder, eggs, vanilla and almond extract until smooth; scrape into the tin and bake 25–30 mins until a skewer comes out clean; cool 10 mins in the tin then finish cooling on a wire rack.
- Make the pink sponge: repeat the same mix but omit almond extract and fold in pink food colouring; bake and cool.
- Heat apricot jam until runny and sieve.
- Trim two opposite edges from the almond sponge and well trim a third edge; measure sponge height and cut 4 slices each the same width as the height; repeat with the pink cake.
- Trim slices to equal length and roll out marzipan on a surface dusted with icing sugar to just over 20cm wide and about 0.5cm thick.
- Brush marzipan with apricot jam and lay a pink and an almond slice side by side at one end, brush jam between layers and on top, then place remaining two slices on top to form a checkerboard; trim marzipan to cake length.
- Lift and smooth marzipan over the cake leaving a small fold along the bottom edge, trim and crimp edges; optionally mark slices with a fork.
- Repeat to assemble second Battenberg if desired; store airtight up to 3 days or freeze up to 1 month.