A Battenberg cake is very pretty looking and the pink and white contrast is beautiful.  For this cake you do not need a specialist Battenberg Cake tin.  I am going to show you how to bake a Battenberg cake without a Battenberg tin.

You bake the pink cake on one side and the plain cake on the other side and when they are ready you cut them in half and follow the assembling instructions according the recipe method.

Ingredients

• 175 grams butter
• 175 grams caster sugar
• 175 grams self raising flour
• 3 medium eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• red or pink food colouring paste

to decorate

• 4-5 tablespoons apricot jam
• 350 grams marzipan
• icing sugar or cornflour for dusting

Method

• Pre-heat the oven to 180 Celsius
• Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin and divide it into two sections with a thick piece of baking paper or foil.  Put the pink in one half and the white in the other half.  When the cakes have bake and cooled you can cut the halves in half to have 4 long pieces of the cake.
• Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and cream it until light.
• Add the eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition
• Add the vanilla extract and flour and mix until smooth
• Divide the mixture into two and add the red or pink food colouring into one half and mix well
• Spoon the mixtures into the prepared tin
• Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes, test with a toothpick to see if it is ready.
• Allow the cakes to cool in the tin for about 5 minutes.  If the tops are not even, cut the domes off to level the cakes before turning them onto a cooling rack and peeling off the baking paper to cool completely
• Roll out the marzipan onto baking paper sprinkled with icing sugar or cornflour into a rectangle approximately 20cm x 30cm
• Warm the apricot jam and then spread on one of the long sides of the plain cake and join it to the pink cake and place it on top of the marzipan. Spread more jam on top of the cakes and put the pink cake on top of the plain one and the plain one on top of the pink one.
• Now brush the jam all over the cake including the sides and top
• Roll up the cake in the marzipan and trim of any excess.
• You can decorate the top with the left over marzipan e.g marzipan flowers/leaves