How to make a winning Battenburg cake

My Battenburg cake has just won in the TRHA Spring Show. How did I do it? Well here is a recipe, they are all very similar. You make a sponge mix, as per the recipe and divide it in half and colour half with red colouring and mix it in well.

You need a rectangular tin, you can buy tins specifically for making this cake. It can be divided into four, I prefer to use two compartments and cut each piece of sponge in half to give me four slices. It needs to be greased and lined with greaseproof paper. 

The mixture is then put in the tin, levelled out, note you will find the centre rises more during baking.

After baking and cooling, (do make sure you don’t over bake it, else it will be dry.)

I have a cake cutting wire that you can use to cut a cake in half horizontally. I used this to cut the top off the cooked slices so they are flat. 

You also need to cut off the edges that were against the tin, to remove the crust if you like. Both pieces should be of the same size.

You then need to cut the slices in two to give you four slices, accuracy is super important here.

You roll out some of the marzipan big enough for the slices to be placed on. Apricot conserve is spread on the marzipan to act as a glue.


You can repeat using the other three slices, putting conserve between all the surfaces.


You then roll out the rest of the marzipan to cover the other three sides of the cake, you then place the marzipan over the cake, and gently press it to be a snug fit. At the bottom you crimp the marzipan against the marzipan on the base. Trim the extra marzipan away, I then put it in the fridge to cool and set. After a while, bring it out and adjust it so it’s level and straight and true. Note the picture below is before these final adjustments were made!


I did want to have the word Battenburg on the top of the cake in coloured letters. I had two ways of making the letters but even when I froze the marzipan extracting it from the mould letters, had it break up into pieces unfortunately! But it still came 1st.

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