June's Daring Bakers: Battenberg Cake

The June challenge for Daring Bakers was the cutest challenge I’ve participated in.

Mandy of What The Fruitcake?! came to our rescue last minute to present us with the Battenberg Cake challenge! She highlighted Mary Berry’s techniques and recipes to allow us to create this unique little cake with ease.

I spent a long time making up my mind about what flavors to use, but I ended up going with raspberry and almond cake with raspberry jam to hold the layers together.  I thought about using chocolate ganache instead of jam, but that seemed like it would too heavy for the cake.

The cake was easy enough to make – I think I spent more time making a wicked awesome divider for my cake pan than mixing cake batter.  Even as a software person, I like to show off my mechanical skills every now and then, and this is about as good as it gets:

Foil - expert level

The cake rose beautifully and I trimmed it down into even strips as well as I could and ended up with a plate a snacks, er, scraps…

Strips and "Scraps"

This was my first time ever working with fondant and I think it went pretty well.  I should have wrapped the cake in the fondant so that the bottom was covered too, but oh well.  I also should have rolled the fondant a little thinner – I like the taste of it, but it was definitely too thick.

Fondant aside, this is one of the prettiest things I’ve ever baked!  And it tasted as good as it looks.  The cake was really moist and the raspberry and almond flavors were perfect together.

Finished!