Skip to navigation Skip to content
Print

Waitrose

Zoomer icon

Battenberg Cake

Back

 
 

Battenberg Cake

Proper homemade marzipan gives this cake the edge over its shop-bought equivalents, but you can use ready-bought natural marzipan if you like.

Preparation time:
1½ hours, plus 30 minutes chilling
Cooking time:
25 minutes to 30 minutes
Total time:
2 hours 25 minutes to 2 hours 30 minutes, including chilling 60 minutes 60 minutes 30 minutes
Serves:
 6 - 8

Ingredients

  • 150g caster sugar
  • 3 medium eggs, beaten
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 150g self-raising flour
  • 2 tbsp milk
  • 1 drop red food colouring
  • 4 tbsp apricot jam
  • 150g unsalted butter, softened
  • Marzipan
  • 75g icing sugar, plus extra for rolling out
  • 1 medium egg
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • 175g ground almonds
  • 1 medium egg yolk

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C, gas mark 4. Butter a 20cm square cake tin and line the base with greased baking parchment. Divide the tin in half with a 30cm strip of foil folded into a double thickness
  2. For the cake, beat together the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour and milk until smooth. Divide into 2. Use the tiniest dab of red food colouring to tint half the mixture pink. Spoon this into one side of the tin and spread level; fill the other side with the rest. Bake for 25–30 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack.
  3. Meanwhile make the marzipan. In a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, whisk the sugars, egg and yolk for about 10 minutes until pale and thick. Take off the heat; mix in the lemon juice and ground almonds until smooth. Wrap and chill for 30 minutes
  4. To assemble, lay one piece of cake on top of the other and trim to the same size. Cut in half lengthways to give 2 long strips of each colour. Warm the apricot jam and sieve. Lay a strip of pink cake on a board and brush the top and sides with jam; lay a plain strip next to it and do the same. Arrange the other 2 strips on top, colours reversed, and brush the jam all over. Roll the marzipan into a 20cm x 30 cm rectangle. Place the cake at one end of the rectangle and tightly wrap in the marzipan, patching any holes. Sit on the seam, slice and serve.

Comments and images

Average user rating 4 stars out of 5

Add your comment and share your thoughts and pictures with others.

vlm

vlm 03 May 2010 14:27

The recipe misses out a key ingredient for the marzipan. There should be 75g of caster sugar in addition to the 75g of icing sugar

clarey22

clarey22 06 September 2008 18:14

This recipe doesn't give the amount of sugar to use in the sponge! I used an amount equal to the amount of butter used (150g) which worked out just fine.

Add comment/image

Delete comment

Are you sure you want to delete this comment?

Cancel

4 stars out of 5

Average user rating Based on 54 ratings

Thank you for rating this recipe. If you'd like to comment further on this recipe you can do so in the Customer comment & images section on the bottom of the page.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Click to rate this recipe

Nutritional Info

Typical values per serving:
Energy 573.0kcal
Sugars 47.7g
Fat 32.7g
Saturated Fat 12.6g
Salt 0.3g

Click here for more information about health and nutrition


This recipe was first published on Waitrose.com in May 2007