When I was at the office on Monday, the increasing likelihood of a government shutdown was looming large in everyone's minds. I asked my coworkers what baked goods they thought might be appropriate for a furlough, and they gave me a lot of great ideas. One I liked in particular was a suggestion for something that might be served at a tea party; it reminded me of something that has been on my to-bake list for over a year, Battenberg cake.
Last summer when Tom and I were on vacation in the Pacific Northwest, we had afternoon tea at the Fairmont Empress hotel in Victoria. Battenberg cake -- different colors of almond sponge cake covered in marzipan -- was included on our platter of bite-sized desserts, and I immediately began wondering if I could make it myself. It turns out that I can!
I decided to use a recipe I found on the BBC Good Food website. I had to make a couple of ingredient substitutions -- I used granulated sugar instead of golden caster sugar, and since I didn't have self-rising flour, I used all-purpose flour and added an extra two teaspoons of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt. The cake recipe cracked me up a little bit -- it says to just dump all of the ingredients (soft butter, sugar, flour, ground almonds, baking powder, eggs, vanilla extract, almond extract) into a bowl and mix them together until smooth. I just couldn't bring myself to do it this way, so I went the more traditional route of creaming together the butter and sugar first, adding in the eggs, and then incorporating the remaining ingredients.
You make two batches of cake batter than are identical, except that one is dyed pink, and for some reason the pink cake doesn't include almond extract -- but it hardly seems to matter, since both cakes contain ground almonds. After baking the two cakes and letting them cool, I leveled them (yet another occasion where my Agbay cake leveler came in incredibly handy) and cut them into strips. To make the checkerboard effect, you just glue different colored strips of cake together with apricot jam. You end up with two logs of cake made from four strips each. Then you wrap the logs in rolled marzipan; the marzipan is also glued on with jam.
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The recipe calls for white marzipan, a product I have never seen (and I don't understand how you can have bright white marzipan if it's made with real almonds -- after all, almonds are tan and they are a major marzipan ingredient). So I used three boxes of Odense marzipan, which wasn't white, but it was plenty to cover the two cakes.
I love the whimsical colors of the finished cake. While the sponge cake was moist and tasted quite good, it wasn't anything exceptional; the marzipan gives the cake a nice flavor boost. The cake definitely looks impressive, but to be honest, it doesn't taste quite as good as it looks. Nonetheless, I would definitely make it again. In any case, my co-workers enjoyed it as we wrapped up our orderly shutdown activities yesterday morning and waited for our furlough notices. We'll see how much time I have to come up with ideas for baked goods that are appropriate for resuming operations!
Recipe: "Battenberg cake" from BBC Good Food.
Last summer when Tom and I were on vacation in the Pacific Northwest, we had afternoon tea at the Fairmont Empress hotel in Victoria. Battenberg cake -- different colors of almond sponge cake covered in marzipan -- was included on our platter of bite-sized desserts, and I immediately began wondering if I could make it myself. It turns out that I can!
I decided to use a recipe I found on the BBC Good Food website. I had to make a couple of ingredient substitutions -- I used granulated sugar instead of golden caster sugar, and since I didn't have self-rising flour, I used all-purpose flour and added an extra two teaspoons of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt. The cake recipe cracked me up a little bit -- it says to just dump all of the ingredients (soft butter, sugar, flour, ground almonds, baking powder, eggs, vanilla extract, almond extract) into a bowl and mix them together until smooth. I just couldn't bring myself to do it this way, so I went the more traditional route of creaming together the butter and sugar first, adding in the eggs, and then incorporating the remaining ingredients.
You make two batches of cake batter than are identical, except that one is dyed pink, and for some reason the pink cake doesn't include almond extract -- but it hardly seems to matter, since both cakes contain ground almonds. After baking the two cakes and letting them cool, I leveled them (yet another occasion where my Agbay cake leveler came in incredibly handy) and cut them into strips. To make the checkerboard effect, you just glue different colored strips of cake together with apricot jam. You end up with two logs of cake made from four strips each. Then you wrap the logs in rolled marzipan; the marzipan is also glued on with jam.
.JPG)
I love the whimsical colors of the finished cake. While the sponge cake was moist and tasted quite good, it wasn't anything exceptional; the marzipan gives the cake a nice flavor boost. The cake definitely looks impressive, but to be honest, it doesn't taste quite as good as it looks. Nonetheless, I would definitely make it again. In any case, my co-workers enjoyed it as we wrapped up our orderly shutdown activities yesterday morning and waited for our furlough notices. We'll see how much time I have to come up with ideas for baked goods that are appropriate for resuming operations!
Recipe: "Battenberg cake" from BBC Good Food.
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