Battenberg Up

When I read this month’s Daring Baker’s challenge, I was kind of excited that it was cake.  "Mandy of What The Fruitcake?! came to our rescue last minute to present us with the Battenberg Cake challenge! She highlighted Mary Berry’s techniques and recipes to allow us to create this unique little cake with ease."  It’s been awhile since I’ve made a cake and I’ve been feeling the urge a little bit.  This cake was the perfect answer as although it’s small in size, it involves a lot of technique.  Perfect!

Knowing that June was shaping up to be a busy month, I had wanted to get the cake done early in the month.  That didn’t work out so well.  On the day I decided I was going to bake the cake, I took the necessary butter and eggs out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature.  There were also several other things I had decided to do that day, and the pan with the ingredients kept getting in my way.  I finally decided to remove it from the kitchen completely instead of moving it from counter to counter.  It ended up on top of the washing machine (our laundry is just off of the kitchen).  In retrospect, this was not the most brilliant idea.  Especially since there was laundry in the washer.  Once the spin cycle started, my pan vibrated right off the edge and on to the floor.  I did manage to salvage the egg that landed on the butter.

You’ve heard that story and seen that picture before – One of Those Days – and that pretty much removed my motivation for the day.  It wasn’t until about a week after returning from a visit to my dad’s before I chose to try again.  The deadline was nearing QUICKLY and I needed to allow enough time for at least one failure.  I would say I had a semi-failure, but it wasn’t enough to make me start over.

While I had read the recipe multiple times earlier in the month, when I actually started making it I failed to remember that I needed self-rising flour.  Self-rising flour is not something I use often enough to keep on hand.  Fortunately there were instructions for making your own, which is what I did.  Instead of using artificial color (which I prefer not to use) I colored my cakes with ground dried hibiscus petals and turmeric.  I got a little carried away with both.  I knew when I looked at the batter with the hibiscus that the color wasn’t going to turn out at all as I would have liked.  And then when I put the cakes in the oven, I realized I had forgotten to add the vanilla and almond extracts.  Big sigh.  It meant the cake wasn’t going to taste very good, but it wasn’t enough to make me start over.  No one looking at the photo was going to know I forgot the extracts.  But the color!  What was intended to be pink and yellow ended up being purple and gold.  Fine for high school colors, but not so great for cake.

Cutting the cakes was causing me some stress.  I am not very good at straight cuts.  To help me along, I devised my own “cutting guide”.  It took me longer to find two identical items of the appropriate size than it did to actually cut the cakes.  At least that part worked well:  Sure-Jel to the rescue.  Putting the pieces of cake together in the checkerboard pattern – not so much.  The recipe recommends using heated and sieved apricot jam to glue the cake strips together.  I didn’t have any and used some citrus marmalade instead.  Apparently my marmalade doesn’t have the same tenacity as apricot jam.  It wasn’t sufficient to convince the cake to stay together. 

The choices for the covering were marzipan, chocolate plastique (modeling chocolate) or fondant.  I had a little bit of marzipan, but not enough to cover the entire cake.  I also had some modeling chocolate but, again, not enough to cover the entire cake.  So I combined them.  

Despite a passion for things pastry, I absolutely despise confectioners’ sugar and try to avoid it whenever possible.  To roll out my marzipan/modeling chocolate mixture, I placed it between two silicone mats.  I removed the top mat and added the pattern to the covering, then put the top mat back on the flipped it over so when I rolled it around the cake the pattern would be on the outside.  In theory, it worked well.  In reality, the cake didn’t want to stick to it and the pieces tried to come apart when I rolled it. 

Being too stubborn to scrap the whole thing and start over, I got out some honey.  I drizzled a little bit in between the cake pieces that were trying to separate as well as brushing some on the cake covering.  The cake still didn’t want to stay together, but at least it was sticking to the covering. 

Some time ago I had purchased some sugar pearls that I'd not had an opportunity to use yet.  I thought they would look nice where the lines on the cake intersected.  True to the spirit of this cake, I spilled sugar pearls all over the floor while trying to open the safety seal.  I'm still finding them in odd parts of the kitchen.

All pseudo-catastrophes aside, this is what I ended up with:

With the purple and gold, it’s definiely not the attractive pink and yellow cake I imagined.  And because the extracts are missing, it doesn’t even taste very good.  I’m still glad I made it and finished it.  I hope I have time in the future to try this again.  It’s a great technique and with practice I think will produce some awesome results.  Be sure to check out some of the other results on the Daring Kitchen site.  Some of them are just gorgeous and the bakers were incredibly creative. 

For the recipe(s), visit the Daring Kitchen Recipe Archive.  I’m thinking of trying the coffee-walnut version.  I’m also thinking I should have made that one in the first place!