Daring Bakers: Battenburg Cake

I've been watching episodes of The Great British Bake Off (a competitive baking show for British home bakers) almost non-stop this past month and have been so inspired by the delicious bakes the contestants of the show were challenged to create. I am also in LOVE with English baker and "cake queen" Mary Berry. She's delightful. One week, she challenged the contestants to bake her famed Battenburg cake, a basic sponge in two colours, arranged in a checkerboard pattern and then wrapped in marzipan. It was such a pretty cake and I wanted to jump right up and march into my kitchen and join the challenge myself. 

Well, I didn't. I remained in the lounge chair watching the episode and then another two after and then I went to bed. Oh well. 

And then I logged on to the Daring Baker's site to see what our challenge for July was. In a "celebration" of past Daring Baker and Daring Cook challenges, Lis challenged all of us to search through the Daring Kitchen archives and pick any one we'd like! The REAL challenge was picking which delicious recipe(s) to try. 

I knew immediately what recipe I wanted to try: the Battenburg cake, of course! This was originally a challenge posed by Mandy of What the Fruitcake? last June. Mandy provided some neat tips on the techniques and flavours for making a beautiful Battenburg cake, referring to Mary Berry's recipe.

I dove right in.

Battenburg Cake

175g softened butter

175g sugar

175g self-raising flour

3 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 cup coconut, freshly grated

pink colouring

To assemble

5 tbsp apricot jam

200g marzipan

The first step is to prepare the baking tin: a 8" X 8" cake tin which is divided in two parts with just parchment paper. What? here's how.  First, grease the base of the baking tin with butter. Next, cut a sheet of parchment paper that is twice the length of your tin (so, 16"). Make a crease in the center and then fit the left and right sides of the parchment to fit the tin. Because of the butter, the paper will stick to the bottom and you will be left with extra paper in the middle. Perfect, fold this up to form a divider between the right and left sides of the tin. 

Next the batter. The cake is a basic sponge with equal amounts of butter, sugar and flour. Mix all ingredients together. Yup, you don't have to cream the butter and sugar together first and then add the eggs and flour. You can chuck everything in and mix them all together from the start.

Divide in two.

I flavoured one part of the batter with ground ginger (and no colour) and the other with fresh coconut and a drop of pink colouring (I coloured this batter pink, reminiscent of the coconut candy desserts that my mother used to make).  

Fill the batters into the separated sections of the tin and bake for about 30 mins.

Once the cake is done, allow to cool in the tin for 10 mins and then rremove them gently onto your cutting board, allowing them to cool completely. Both sides should be equal but if, like me, you divided the tin slightly unevenly with one side slightly larger than the other, you need to gently trim the cakes to size. Cut off uneven edges too. If one cake has risen a little more than the other, gently press the one that's taller so that they are equal in height.

Cut each cake in half, lengthwise. 

So now you have two long strips of pink and two long strips of yellow. 

Place the one strip of pink and one strip of yellow side by side and once again, make sure they are identical in length and height. Keep the pink one of the right and the yellow on the left. 

Heat the apricot jam until it thins out. 

Using a brush, spread the apricot jam on the side of one log and then bring then two strips together. The jam should act as glue and with a little pressure the two strips should join as one. Perfect. Now, repeat with the remaining strips, this time put the yellow on your right and the pink on your left. Brush with jam and join them together. 

Now you have two pairs. Brush the top of one pair with jam and gently lift the other pair and place it on top of the jammy surface. Gently press together so they are stuck. You have your checkerboard cake!

Now for the marzipan. I didn't have 200g of marzipan. I thought I did but it turns out I only had about 100g - I'd apparently used the other 100g for another recipe some time back and forgot all about it. Sheesh. I therefore had to cut my cake in half and wrap only one portion, thus creating mini Battenburg cakes. Boo hoo hoo. 

So, knead the marzipan so it's soft and easy to work with. Dust the cutting board with icing sugar and roll the marzipan out: it should be oblong and big enough to cover the sides and top of the cake. 

Brush the top of the cake with jam and then gently place the cake, jam side down, on the sheet of marzipan. Brush the remaining three sides with jam and gently fold the marzipan over the cake, making sure the seams are either along the sides or at the top of the cake. 

Now, flip the cake so the seams go to the bottom. My seaming was rather untidy but I will do better next time :)

Using a small, sharp knife, score the top surface of the marzipan so you get a square (or diamond, if you like) pattern and decorate.

Chill the cake and then cut and serve :)

Carrot Ginger Cupcakes

This was my first time playing with Marzipan. Yes, playing. Shaping the soft almond paste into tiny little carrots was fun (even though some of my carrots looked like chillies!). So there you have it, the real reason I made these Carrot and Ginger cupcakes, courtesy of Miss Martha Stewart, was because it gave me an excuse to make the tiny carrot garnish: Martha's were a lot more 'real' as she dunked them briefly in a bowl of chocolate cookie crumbs to give them the gritty texture and look of real carrots, fresh from the soil. 

But, as great as an idea that was, I wasn't too keen on adding soil on these beauties, even if the soil was really cookies. Delicious cookies. Nah. I thought it a better idea to eat the cookies while I shaped the marzipan.

Marzipan can be bought in cake supply stores or your regular grocer. It comes in a 500g packet and is unchilled (but once you open the pack, it's best to keep it in the refrigerator. It can keep for up to a month).

The paste has to be kneaded slightly to make it pliable enough to be shaped (like play-doh); add the colour while kneading so it's evenly spread. I didn't have orange food colouring so I mixed a drop of red into the yellow colouring. And a small batch of green for the leaves. Once the colour has been added, pinch bits of the marzipan and roll into balls and then shape into carrots. Score the carrots with a knife if you want to replicate the slight cuts that appear on the carrot.

Martha's carrot cupcake recipe has more or less all the ingredients you'd find in any carrot cake recipe: grated fresh carrots, flour, sugar, eggs, vegetable oil, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

And then, there's that other ingredient she slips in: grated ginger. Fresh ginger, thank you very much. Not the crystallised pieces I often dump in cakes. Nope, grated FRESH ginger.

The addition of fresh ginger into the cake batter gives the cake a very welcome zing which I really liked.

A note on ginger: I usually buy more ginger than I use and so I store them for up to five or six months in my freezer. Just cut the ginger into 3cm pieces (that's about the amount I use each time), skin them and freeze them. This recipe calls for just 1 tablespoon of grated ginger so I took out just one piece and grated it while frozen — it's actually easier to grate ginger when it's fresh!

And then there are the nuts. I usually use walnuts but Martha uses pecans. A cupful of pecans. I only had about a handful of pecans at home — not even close to 1/4 cup and so I added to the meagre portion the only other kind of nut I had: pistachios. Sightly roasted and chopped. 

The topping is your regular cream cheese topping (butter, cream cheese and icing sugar). Martha adds some grated orange zest into hers but I substituted this with lemon zest as that was all I had. You can also add finely grated ginger (again fresh) as well though just a tiny bit.

If you're not a fan of cream cheese topping (or any topping), the cakes are delicious enough to be eaten naked, fresh from the oven. But, forgoing the frosting would mean forgoing the cute carrots on top! What a shame that would be!

Martha Stewart's Carrot and Ginger Cupcakes
(My substitutions are in red)

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups sugar (I used 1.5 cups)
1 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
450g carrots, finely grated
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup roasted and chopped pecan halves (I used pistachios and pecans)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line your cupcake trays with liners.
Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.
Whisk the eggs, oil, sugar, carrots and vanilla till incorporated. Fold in the flour in batches. Add the nuts.
Fill the cupcake liners with batter (3/4 full). Bake for 20-23 mins or till a tester comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Frosting (You can get Martha's recipe for Orange-Ginger Frosting here)
60g butter, unsalted, at room temperature
250g cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup icing sugar

Beat the butter in a mixer till fluffy. Add the cream cheese and beat till pale and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat for another 3-5 mins. Chill for about 15 mins.