Great British Battenberg

One of my favorite ways to spend a Sunday is to bake for a cricket tea, there could not be a more perfect combination of homemade cakes, (sometimes) sunny  Sunday afternoons, the great British game and to tie it all up, its a tradition. A tradition I am all too happy to continue.  To bake sweet and savory, to really conjure up a glorified picnic and watch two teams devour the tea in less than five minutes is strangely rewarding.
Choosing the menu for the tea is primarily based on what will the teams know and love to eat, also when I hear ‘I havnt had those in years’, I feel a sense of achievement, that I have created something that takes them back to good memories. Great British Classics creates a sense of nostalgia around the table.  Goats cheese and red onion loaves have been tried and failed, however, a sausage roll or pork pie will be happily tucked away. Stick with the classics, and it cannot go far wrong.    The last cricket tea produced consisted of:  Ham salad, cheese and pickle, BLT, and jam sandwiches, the jam in neat white triangles of bread, the others in a selection of bulging French sticks and wholemeal bread.  Homemade pork pies,  quiche (always a winner)  and pizza. The sweet selection was iced buns with jam and cream, chocolate Malteaser cake, vieneese whirls, millionaire shortbread, Battenburg and a selection of iced jems and sweets. Melon and grapes were also there to provide some sort of healthy balance, thought not very successfully. The chance for me to create so many baked goods and present them is a privilege. I feel entirely lucky I have the chance to do this and it would be a lovely dream, along with the Leiths student to be able to produce a cricket tea at Lords or the like. Yes its too idyllic, nostalgic and probably not at all how I imagine it to be but still its a nice thought.  

To the Batternberg...

• I use the recipe from the Great British Bake Off book, series 1. It makes a great, moist sponge with lovely colours, and a thick marzipan icing. Making a Battenberg is not as hard as it seems, it just requires a bit of thinking about before you start cutting up sponges. A few things I have learnt:
•    I don’t use a Battenberg tin, just two square tins when I double the recipe. Doubling the recipe will produce a tin of vanilla and a tin of pink sponge which will make two Battenberg's, you could freeze the sponge you don’t use. 
•   Don’t dry out the sponges, keep a careful eye on the cooking time, only the last few times have I taken the sponge out earlier than normal and it makes the cake much richer and nicer to eat.
•    Adding the pink food colouring means you will have to mix the sponge mixture more than you would a normal sponge, just to get an even colour, so try not to mix the ingredients to  much previous to adding the colouring, just to allow for this extra mixing at the end.
•  A sharp bread knife will prove to give the cleanest edges. There will be a lot of waste of the sponge, not always wasted as family members kindly take it off my hands but to make the Battenberg fit together best you might have to cut a far bit from each edge.
•  Make sure they all fit together by making the Battenberg up before adding all of the jam, its easier to find the right combination like this.
•  Have plenty of marzipan, more than you think you will need and don’t roll it too thin. Its nice to have a thick outer layer, firstly so the bumps in the sponge do not show and it I think it tastes nicer.
•   Have plenty of apricot jam to hand, and warm it up. Coat the sponges in jam very genoursly to stick the together.
•  I use icing sugar to dust on the work surface, it keeps the cake nice and sweet and marzipan will stick.        
•   Once all is made up, cut off either end and coat in caster sugar, it is a cake of wonderful nostalgia and beauty, that is of course if you like marzipan.    

 Battenberg Cake, makes 1 medium loaf

1. Preheat the oven to 180oc/350of/gas 4. Grease and line a 20 x 15 cm Battenberg tin or an 18cm square cake tin divided into two halves with foil or greaseproof paper. Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and beat with a wooden spoon or electric mixer until very light and fluffy, this could take up to 8 mins, it helps to soften the butter with the whisk or spoon first until pale, then add the butter. 
2. Mix the eggs and vanilla, then gradually add to the mixture, beating well after each addition
3. Sift the flour into the bowl, add the milk, and gently fold the ingredients together using a large metal spoon. Do not over mix at this stage. Using a metal spoon instead of a wooden spoon to fold  means there is less surface area to break down the air bubbles when folding the cake mixture, once the flour is added, being gentle with the cake mixture should produce a well risen, soft sponge. 
4. divide the mixture in half, spoon one half into the prepared tin and spread evenly. 
5. Add the pink food coloring to the second half of the mixture, folding through gently but thoroughly. Spoon this into the other half of the prepared tin and spread evenly. 
6. Bake for 25-30 mins, until firm to the touch. Take out of the oven and run a round bladed knife around the side to loosen. Leave in the tin to cool on a wire rack. 
7. When cool, turn out the sponge and remove the lining paper. Trim the cakes if they have risen unevenly until they are fairly level, try not to cut too much off at this stage. 
8. Cut the vanilla sponge into 2 sections, and the pink sponge into 2 sections, there should be 4 strips of sponge in total. Try to build the Battenberg to work out the combination the sponges sit most neatly. 
9. Heat the apricot jam and brush off any crumbs from the sponges
10. lightly dust the surface with icing sugar and roll the marzipan to a rectangle of 20 x 30cm or as wide as the longest side of the strip of sponge. 
11. Brush all of the sides of one strip of sponge with the apricot jam and set to one end of the marzipan. 
12. Repeat this process with the other strips of sponge, setting them down next to and on top of each other, to build a Battenberg pattern.
13. wrap the marzipan neatly over and around the whole cake, leaving the ends visible. Trim off the excess marzipan and slice the ends to neaten. 
14. The top can be left plain or pinched, the Battenberg can be rolled in caster sugar or dusted with icing sugar. 

  * TIP Judge when the cake is cooked by; lightly pressed the sponge - it should spring back, it should feel firm and the sides of the sponge should just be coming away from the side of tin. When taken out of the oven the cake should not talk to you, if the cake is underdone you will hear the cake bubbling when you listen to it, if so, put the cake back in the oven for a minute or two. The cake is ready when it is a lot quieter if not silent when you take it from the oven.