Ingredients
175g Butter
175g Caster Sugar
140g Self-raising Flour
50g Almonds
½ tsp Baking Powder
3 Medium Eggs
½ tsp Vanilla Extract
¼ teaspoon Almond Extract- 175g Butter
- 175g Caster Sugar
- 140g Self-raising Flour
- 50g Almonds
- ½ tsp Baking Powder
- 3 Medium Eggs
- ½ tsp Vanilla Extract
- ¼ teaspoon Almond Extract
½ tsp Pink Food Colouring
200g Apricot
1kg Marzipan
Dusting Icing Sugar
Preparation
- Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and line the base and sides of a 20cm square tin with baking parchment (the easiest way is to cross 2 x 20cm-long strips over the base).
- To make the almond sponge, put the butter, sugar, flour, ground almonds, baking powder, eggs, vanilla and almond extract in a large bowl.
- Beat with an electric whisk until the mix comes together smoothly.
- Scrape into the tin, spreading to the corners, and bake for 25-30 mins – when you poke in a skewer, it should come out clean.
- Cool in the tin for 10 mins, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling while you make the second sponge.
- For the pink sponge, line the tin as above.
- Mix all the ingredients together as above, but don’t add the almond extract.
- Fold in some pink food colouring.
- Then scrape it all into the tin and bake as before.
- Cool.
- To assemble, heat the jam in a small pan until runny, then sieve.
- Barely trim two opposite edges from the almond sponge, then well trim a third edge.
- Roughly measure the height of the sponge, then cutting from the well-trimmed edge, use a ruler to help you cut 4 slices each the same width as the sponge height.
- Discard or nibble leftover sponge.
- Repeat with pink cake.
- Take 2 x almond slices and 2 x pink slices and trim so they are all the same length.
- Roll out one marzipan block on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar to just over 20cm wide, then keep rolling lengthways until the marzipan is roughly 0.5cm thick.
- Brush with apricot jam, then lay a pink and an almond slice side by side at one end of the marzipan, brushing jam in between to stick sponges, and leaving 4cm clear marzipan at the end.
- Brush more jam on top of the sponges, then sandwich remaining 2 slices on top, alternating colours to give a checkerboard effect.
- Trim the marzipan to the length of the cakes.
- Carefully lift up the marzipan and smooth over the cake with your hands, but leave a small marzipan fold along the bottom edge before you stick it to the first side.
- Trim opposite side to match size of fold, then crimp edges using fingers and thumb (or, more simply, press with prongs of fork).
- If you like, mark the 10 slices using the prongs of a fork.
- Assemble second Battenberg and keep in an airtight box or well wrapped in cling film for up to 3 days.
- Can be frozen for up to a month.
Adapted from TheMealDB.